From Plumber to Pirate
by TalesToIntrigue
Summary: Mario had no idea where he was, where his friends were or who these people really were but somewhere deep inside of himself, he knew things would work out just fine by the time this was all over.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter I: A rescue gone wrong!/Who's that guy from the sky?

"We're not gonna' let him get through this time!"

"Load the Bill Blasters!"

"Hammer Brother squads have been armed!"

"Get into your positions if you don't want the boss to crush you!"

Upon a pair of tall wooden doors which blocked the pathway outside of a large, musty, classically Gothic in appearance hallway, some already sizable cracks were growing larger and larger with a loud banging sound accompanying them every few moments. As this happened, several groups of guards prepared to defend said hallway from whatever was on the other side of the towering hinged pieces of timber in front of them.

Now, although the guards preparing to defend their current whereabouts were all more than qualified to do so, it would have still seemed very odd to most people to watch as groups of talking turtles and mobile mushrooms ran around each other, as they all tried to get into the best tactical positions possible for a soon to occur battle.

"Bill Blasters are locked and loaded, sir!"

"Paratroopers ready for aerial assault, sir!"

"Everyone, hold your positions until my word!"

BAAAAANNNG!

The doors were almost falling apart by themselves at this point anyways thanks to the unrelenting thrashing from the outside forces being used against them but that last hit in particular had successfully knocked some of the bolts that were only barely holding the already overly stressed hinges of the doors in place out onto the floor below. The attack had also caused cracks to appear over any areas of the doors that had managed to go free of them seconds prior. The doors now looked as if a strong enough breeze would turn them into nothing more than a large pile of sawdust.

This event had the side effect of causing the amount of tension the various creatures in the hallway felt to increase tenfold, thus creating an atmosphere of fear and self-preservation which made each and every one of the creatures want to flee at that very moment.

However that urge was suppressed by the sole thing that they all knew they still had to do, which came in the form of a direct command from their Boss. He had, in a very persuasive manner, ordered them all to not let anyone so much as set foot inside this building, under any circumstances.

Nobody liked that but still, orders were orders.

"Get ready, this is it!"

After one of the many yellow, anthropomorphic turtles wearing a green and white helmet on their head and clenching a small hammer in their fist shouted this, a horribly strong silence befell everyone inside of the spacious passage for nobody-knew-how-long. All of the creatures eyes remained firmly fixated on the somehow still standing doors all the while, as they prepared to stop whatever was about to come bursting through them.

In a similar fashion, they also thought about what would happen if they failed to stop whoever the attacker was as quickly as possible, since their leader was not in fact someone who practiced the virtues of patience or forgiveness… ever.

CRASH!

Whatever minute force that had still been holding the pair of doors up had finally been completely destroyed by that last hit. This let the now useless remains of the doors fall away from their frame to reveal that the hallway served as an entrance to a castle.

Looking outside at the heavily overcast courtyard contained inside of the now visible, tall, deep gray stone walls just beyond the ex-doorway, it would've been made blatantly clear to even the most casual of observers that it had seen far better days in its past.

The small army of assorted, odd looking, knocked out monsters, whose ranks included many more creatures similar in appearance to those inside of the castle, such as more turtle-like creatures wearing football uniforms in place of shells and giant caterpillars with flowers growing on the tops their heads, along with the scorched patches of dirt which stretched off in all directions were the two largest factors as to why this was the case.

Regretfully though, none of destroyed soil nor any of the fallen creatures state of being mattered to their remaining comrades on the inside of the castle's walls, as a strong sense of dread had blocked out any and all chances for thoughts concerning things not directly related to the freshly splintered doors in front of them to form in their minds.

To be fair though, this mindset was also partially created by the large cloud of dust that had just been stirred up thanks to both of the fractured doors pieces slamming harshly onto the ground. This quite effectively prevented any opportunity to see whoever or whatever had done this to their castle, making it so the creatures didn't really have a chance to see or care about any of their fallen allies since, again, the whole "we're all going to die" part of their brains had fully taken over by now.

Needless to say was the fact that the groups of mushrooms and turtles needed no instruction on what they should do next but they were given some anyway.

"ATTACK AT WILL!"

Just as soon as the one turtle who seemed to be in charge finished barking out his second order to all the squads of creatures within hearing range of him, balls of fire started to fly out from the cloud of dust in a surprise attack on all of the unsuspecting guards that were closest to the doorway.

Some of the less fortunate creatures who couldn't dodge the attack in time would soon find themselves knocked out from heat based pain with new found crispy textures bestowed upon them.

Creatures who had managed to dodge the attack immediately tried to retaliate by charging straight into the cloud for a full frontal attack against their unseen enemy. Just as quickly as yellow turtles and brown mushrooms charged into the dust cloud, they were all swiftly knocked back out of it in quite literal droves.

After seeing even more of their comrades fall to this so far unstoppable force, a few turtles who were positioned next to mounted black cannons emblazoned with cartoony skulls on a large walkway built back away from the Castle's entrance wasted no more time in immediately firing at the hidden enemy who had launched an all out attack on them.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A fairly sizable number of troops had already been taken care of, when two distinctly human shaped figures leapt out from the could of dust and began jumping, yes, _jumping_ on what the cannons were shooting out towards them.

By doing this it caused the, oddly enough, bullet shaped ammunition with big angry eyes and small white arms, to drop to the ground as soon as either of the figures feet made contact with any one of the bullets, despite how physics would deem this feat to be quite impossible.

This development had made the captain turtle, who was now busy shouting out orders to two panicking groups of similarly green shelled, hammer holding, helmet wearing turtles on the same walkway as he, begin to idly contemplate whether or not he should simply surrender to these attackers right now.

Meanwhile, the two figures continued jumping from cannon-bullet to cannon-bullet as some more turtles, which had through some process sprouted functioning sets of wings on the outside of their shells, tried to swoop down on the invaders for a surprise aerial attack. The figures however soon noticed the rising reptiles and one of them retaliated by spontaneously creating some fireballs past the ends of their hands which they then threw towards their air born assailants, the whole process ending with the turtles spiraling straight down to the ground below with all of their knocked out brethren.

With another threat disposed of the figures, in a final rush of motion, used the momentum they had gained from jumping on all of the cannons' ineffective ammo for a final leap towards the overhang where the captain of the guards was situated.

"Yahoo!"

"Yahaa!"

After both of the figures let out a decidedly jovial sounding shout right before they successfully landed, the pair both pulled out their own comically oversized mallet from seemingly nowhere behind themselves and proceeded to use it to repeatedly pound the cannons and turtles firing them.

THWACK! BONK! SLAM! THUD!

The cannons would no longer pose a threat to the pair anymore, as all that remained of them now were small piles of smoking black steel where each one of them had respectively stood only moments before. The cannoneers fared no better than their weapons, as they too had been knocked to the ground alongside the piles of steel with newly formed goosebumps on all of their heads.

After this happened, the squads of helmet and hammer using turtles that were standing at either end of the walkway had finally managed to compose themselves enough to begin counterattacking these two unwelcomed guests by throwing a near constant stream of small hammers through the air in a large arch towards them, once they realized they would become this destructive duo's next target if they didn't.

Seeing this, the pair split from each other to avoid getting hit by the attack, then promptly dashed towards the group of turtles at the end of the walkway closest to them. As they ran, both figures held their mallet out from their body and started to spin around. Soon enough, the figures had built up enough momentum from doing this that they both shifted form into that of a pair of miniature tornadoes.

Using their new found power and speed, both of the intruders twirled straight into their group of hammer chucking turtles and sent them all flying over the edge of the overhang in one swift swinging motion before slowing back down to a more reasonable speed once again.

Now that the way was clear, the two figures turned their attention away from the rapidly closing in reinforcements coming from the lower level of the castle, to the currently paralyzed with fear captain turtle.

As they approached him, the captain turtle took a moment to reflect on the fact that this entire hall was only moments prior filled with many a highly trained soldier, who were all dead set on stopping these attackers; which they had been completely prepared for no less, from advancing even a single step inside their stronghold. Nearly half of those same soldiers were now strewn across the floor below utterly defeated, after a fight which had at most taken place over the course of five minutes. This didn't even account for all of the soldiers who had been knocked out beyond the castle's walls either.

Yeah, this was pretty bad.

The leader of the soldiers broke away from his thoughts long enough to notice that standing directly in front of him were the very same figures he was just thinking about.

Only an arms length of space resided between himself and the figures now but even if there had been a mile of emptiness separating them, he still would've felt the pairs determined glares on him from under the hats they were wearing.

His erratic breathing and stunned stupor lent more then a hand to his sudden bout of speechlessness he was experiencing, which only further agitated the Captain's unease as he needed to get these two away from himself as quickly as possible.

"Bo-Bo-Bowser has P-Princess Peach d-down a se-se-secret s-staircase behind th-that sta-statue o-of himself in th-the L-Laboratory."

Without a word, the pair nodded to him and shared a brief glance with each other before jumping down from the overhang, which was impressive considering it was suspended about forty feet up in the air and probably should have injured their legs to some degree after landing, to continue their destructive venture down into the depths of the castle.

They continued to use their mallets to knock away all of the remaining troops who still dared to stand in their way as they began descending down a stairwell, which was hidden behind a statue of a turtle who was far larger and more intimidating than any of the others the two had fought, the Captain of the guards had told them about.

As he watched this happen, the Captain turtle tried to imagine just how positively furious his boss would be with him later for allowing this to happen. He guessed that this was going to end up with him being so severely reprimanded that Goombas would be able to hear his boss yelling all the way down in Rogueport; though despite his best efforts, the turtle felt he failed to capture just how bad it would actually go over with him and gave up on trying to do so rather quickly. Also he had fainted before there was even a chance for him to imagine so much as a single syllable word so that probably didn't help.

Despite this, he did manage to squeeze out another, happier thought before he lost consciousness, it being about how sorry those two would be for messing with him once they went downstairs to meet with his boss in person.

...

Beakers and vials filled with different colors of liquid bubbled away madly on tables, shelves upon shelves of books lined the room's walls with topics ranging from chemistry, biology and engineering, to even a book simply titled "Magic: where it is and how you can channel it" and symbols which looked to be nothing more than common geometric shapes were etched across the surface of the otherwise dark room's ceiling and gave off a steady, soft, yellow glow so you could see within the confines of it.

More noticeable than these things however, was the massive collection of machines which were lined against the back wall of the room. Collectively they covered all of the surface area of that particular wall, fitting together perfectly like a large metallic puzzle.

While the machines exact purpose weren't quite obvious, it was obvious that they housed an odd, blue hued liquid which pulsated with an other worldly aura as it flowed throughout each of the pipes, tubes and hoses that connected all of the individual parts to one another. Honestly, the blue hued liquid almost seemed to breath in its own way as it continuously flowed in and out of the different metal capsules which held it within the large frankensteinesque contraption.

This was all very fascinating to the small shell-less turtle who was wearing a light blue robe and matching pointed hat, as well as a pair of glasses so thick that he might as well of had a pair of binoculars strapped to his head.

He was running around whilst muttering things to himself, making adjustments to all of the separate mechanisms lined against the back wall of the room, while frequently consulting with several books laying on top of a table off to the side of the machines.

However, a larger turtle who was directly across the way from him did not in fact find anything happening in front of himself interesting.

No. Not in the slightest.

"GrrrAAAWAAWWAAW!"

Sitting on top of an adequately regal looking chair, he yawned loudly enough that it startled a pair of armor clad turtle guards who were slouching at the entrance of the room back to full consciousness after they had begun to doze off from the same boredom that was afflicting the much larger turtle beside them.

Because he matched the statue from the hallway above to a T, this creature was presumably Bowser.

"Kamek!" Bowser said as he glared at the smaller turtle in a very distasteful way.

"How much longer until this stupid portal of yours is done?"

Kamek was still preoccupied with running back and forth between all of his books and the different sections of the wall of machines but after he had turned some dials and flipped some switches he found a moment to respond to Bowser's question.

"It will be ready sooner than a starving yoshi could eat a freshly plucked batch of berries your Horribleness!"

"Hmmph."

This bit of news made Bowser slump even further back into the throne he had already been slouching in, as he reluctantly resigned himself to resting on it for some unknown length of time more until Kamek could relay new details regarding his machine. This made him look no less threatening however.

He was big, huge even.

He stood at least twice as tall as the guards who now stood fully alert at either side of the room's entrance, easily putting him at seven feet tall. He had rough yellow skin and a grass green shell similar to those turtles as well but with a single major difference. Rather than his shell simply being rounded, it had ten, short, thick spikes growing out from it in a symmetrical pattern.

The only articles of clothing on him were black metal bands on each of his back and fore arms which had sets of six small spikes on them. His hands had fat, rounded, razor sharp claws at the ends of their fingers to which the tips of his toes had sets of the same caliber. As menacing as one might have found his appearance already, all of those things combined could only hope to have half the menace of Bowser's face.

He had large bushy eyebrows which were seemingly locked in a furrowed position and a somewhat long tuft of spiky hair that pointed backwards. All of his hair was a shade of bright, burning red. His mouth looked large even on himself, it stuck out from the rest of his head slightly and had one row of smooth, knife like teeth lining its inside. He had a pair of horns sticking out from high up on the sides of his green face that curved up into the air and ended in needle sharp points. His eyes served as the perfect final touch to complete his horrifying appearance.

Beady, blood-red, unforgiving and wrathful. They were truly the eyes of a monster.

Honestly, he looked more akin to some unholy hybrid of a turtle, human, bull and dragon more so than he looked like a normal turtle, even by this world's standards.

If nothing else, all of this made one thing certain; if there was a thing alive worthy of being feared in this world, Bowser was certainly more than qualified to be that thing.

Bowser cast a bored glance over the Dimension Opening and Portal Entrance doorway in the center of the room as he recalled Kamek referring to it by before, once more to see if there were any discernible changes on or around it. After he did so, he was only once again equal parts disappointed and aggravated to see nothing had changed since he had last checked it.

It still had the same boring illegible symbols engraved on it that were barely flickering blue in the same boring way they had been before. It also still had the same boring barely audible humming sound coming out from the center of its boring halo shaped exterior which had pipes connecting it to the boring wall of machines that was clearly not working as Kamek had intended it to. Bowser concluded that this machine, which simply refused to work, was boring.

Now, Bowser knew well that he wasn't famous for being patient or anything like that. Heck, if anything people knew him for wanting to have things his way all the time anytime he wanted. Even so, this was easily becoming one of the most boring periods of his rule over the many odd creatures of this land that he could recall from his recent memory.

Yes, it was times like this when even he, Bowser, King of the Koopas, tired of his position as an unfair and cruel leader.

He _Especially_ tired of it during the parts when waiting was involved.

He wanted something, anything to happen that could help alleviate his boredom, right now.

...thud..thud..thud…

The king turtle's self observations and pity were interrupted by something that sounded vaguely like thudding in the distance. His eyes widened slightly after he caught onto the fact that something was quickly coming his way.

He didn't look like it but Bowser was now dedicating the entirety of his attention to figuring out what that noise was.

...Thud..Thud..Thud…

"Thwomps slamming into the ground?"

A mischievous grin grew across Bowser's face after a second passed.

"I have to admit, that wimpy plumber is getting a lot faster at this."

Bowser finally decided to stand up from his throne and stretch out a little bit before focusing solely on the entrance to the small room he currently occupied, allowing himself some time to fully prepare for whatever the "wimpy plumber" closing in on his location was.

Both guards followed suit in readying themselves shortly after seeing their leader get up from his throne by turning their full attention to the entrance of the room as well.

Kamek payed no heed to any of them however, as he was currently in the middle of one of his books more descriptive paragraphs and wasn't willing to tear himself away from it.

Unfortunately, this caused Bowser, the guards and Kamek to completely miss the fact that the halo started to let a blue light shine brilliantly through all of the symbols scattered across its surface area for a time, before it dissipated slowly and returned to an inactive state again.

THUD! THUD! THUD!-CRASH!

At long last, the final obstacle standing between the invaders and their target had burst open. The two castle crashers were now in plain view of Bowser as he had seen them so many times before.

Bowser looked over the pair he had come to loath so much for a brief moment to see if they had any hidden weapons that could complicate things but all he found from his once-over was each of them wearing their usual matching attire and gripping their own well used mallet.

They both wore long sleeve shirts which matched the color of their respective hats underneath a pair of bright blue overalls whose straps were held in place by bright yellow buttons. Both wore matching pairs of rounded, dirt brown work boots and soft, snow white gloves which held the handles of their mallets. The most notable thing about the figures were the unusually striking large flat caps they both wore.

The shorter one that had a bit of a belly, bright blue eyes and a small, well trimmed mustache underneath a large bulbous nose, wore a neon red cap with a capital M in the center of a white dot on the front of it.

The taller and skinner one also had the same bright blue eyes as his companion and a similarly well kept mustache underneath an equally oversized nose on his face as well but his cap was neon green and sported a capital L in its white dot in place of an M.

Also worth mentioning, is that these defeaters of an entire army of soldiers, successful invaders of a fully armed fortress and possessors of such incredible strength and speed we're only slightly over half the size of Bowser.

Not quite what one would have expected but nobody else seemed to care as silence overtook the inside of the laboratory for a short while, as everyone waited to see if either opposing party would do anything right away. A short moment passed by without anything of interest happening, which Bowser responded to by suddenly opening his mouth and letting out a loud, booming noise.

"GWA HA HAAAAA!"

The monster of a reptile laughed heartily with an extremely unsettling tone in his voice that wasn't present before or maybe it had been and he was simply amplifying it now. Whatever the case, it reverberated in an unnatural sounding way in far too deep a tone to resemble anything even remotely close to an actual voice a person might have.

"Mario! I expected you to come and try to stop my plans but you brought Luigi along too?" Bowser said as he eyed the taller of the duo for a moment before continuing.

"I suppose it must have been- BRING A COWARD TO WORK DAY! Or you just wanted me to defeat you both in one go so we could get this over with quickly."

Satisfied with what he said, Bowser broke out into a similarly sinister sounding snicker at the expense of Mario and Luigi. They both steeled themselves as he did this, preparing for whatever he was going to do next; although Luigi appeared to be having quite a bit of a harder time doing so when compared to his companion.

Actually, he looked quite horrified by Bowser's previous comment as his whole body shook involuntarily.

While this confrontation still had everyone's attention, the halo flickered back to life again. This time its lights shone slightly brighter than before. The hole in the halo's center almost looked like it too was filled with the same blue liquid that was powering the machine for a brief moment before it, along with halo's glow was lost for a second time. This event had, again, gone completely unnoticed by all of the room's inhabitants who were still preoccupied with watching this meeting of the minds.

Kamek, who had been quite up to this point, finally made the connection in his mind proper that Mario and Luigi had just broken down his secret Laboratory's only door and were now standing inside of his most sacred facility, undoubtedly preparing to rescue the Princess, in what would surely be a very destructive way...

 **Kamek saw the Super Mario Brothers in his Laboratory.**

The glasses wearing wizard was furious at the very idea of this situation and quickly turned to the two guards who had completely forgotten what they were supposed to be doing since falling to the floor from the explosion of the second door destroyed that day by their attackers and since then simply gawked at the pair in awe.

Kamek proceeded to shock them out of this state by yelling an order at them in a high-pitched, nasally voice.

"By the Star Spirits, if you two don't get them out of my lab this instant, I'll turn the both of you into common BRICK BLOCKS!"

That looked like it did the job. The guards realized he wasn't kidding and in a flash were at either of Bowser's sides.

"Sir, Bowser your awfulness, should we remove these unwanted intruders from the Castle grounds, sir!?" They said in a militaristic unison to their leader.

Bowser looked down at his guards and let another crooked grin grow on his face.

"GWA HA HA HAAAAA! Sure, the defeat of Dumbio and his nobody brother is something I wanna' watch!" Bowser said as he sat back in his throne with a grin still on his face.

Realizing his mistake in adding to the conflict a little too late, Kamek looked between the two opposing groups of allies and foes and saw that a fight was about to happen inside of his lab. He didn't like the thought of that one bit.

Kamek started trying to formulate a plan on what he could do to stop the confrontation before anything serious happened which might cause irreversible damage to his equipment. While he was trying to do so, he watched as both pairs of warriors got into fighting stances.

Just then, a proverbial light bulb went off inside of his head.

"Hold it right there, STUPID MARIO BROS.!"

This had successfully caught not only both of the Brothers attention but Bowser's and the two guards as well. With all eyes on him, Kamek yanked a lever on the wall nearby downwards. Immediately afterwards, Gears could be heard turning as something began to happen. When the gears stopped, the brothers were both deeply worried by what they saw.

First Mario shouted.

"Oh, No!"

Then Luigi followed suit.

"WHAAA!"

Over the center of the room a hidden panel had split down it's middle, from which an oversized bird cage came down from the inside of room's ceiling on a chain. It was left to dangle a couple feet above the halo structure.

Inside of the cage lying on her side was a tall, blonde haired, elegant woman wearing a simple pink ball gown style dress which had a large blue gemstone placed over its chest area. She also wore elbow length white gloves, hot pink high heels and a pair of large blue pearl earrings and on her head sat a golden crown which was adorned with more blue and red gemstones of the same variety as the one on her dress.

Presumably, this woman was the aforementioned Princess Peach the leader of the guards had given instructions on how to find.

"Mario! Luigi!"

Princess Peach cried out to the red and green brothers as soon as she saw them with an odd mixture of fear and relief present in her voice. She sat up inside of the cage, grabbed onto one of the bars with one hand and started reaching out towards the brothers with the other.

"Don't even think about it!" Kamek spoke to the pair just as they started to tense up to break the cage open.

"One wrong move and Princess Peach becomes Princess Porcupine!"

Kamek warned the duo with as strong of a smug look his nonthreatening face could muster as he pointed a golden scepter at her. Mario and Luigi Immediately stood down after he said this.

"Ah, of course- the old hostage situation turn around trick. Nicely done Kamek!" Bowser praised his resident magician for his quick thinking before turning his attention back to the brothers.

"Well, well, well. Looks like the Goomba's shoe is on the other-"

The halo shaped contraption lit up again much like it had twice before, however this time it did, it projected a steady image.

The picture inside of the halo was that of the top of a mountain with water rushing up it at violently high speeds from four different canals. A fifth canal had water that flowed down the mountain at the same speed the other streams came up its face. It must have been a very tall mountain, as the only part of it that was visible from the provided image was surrounded by wispy clouds.

Yet again however, nobody noticed that the center of the halo had properly activated.

Not for lack of paying attention to it but rather this time it was because everyone in the laboratory was too busy focusing on trying to avoid getting pulled into the strong vacuum of air that the halo was now using to suck things inside of itself with.

"WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

This was the collective sound from everyone inside the laboratory as the portal tried to suck in anyone and anything it could, which it was succeeding in doing with total ease.

"MAAARI-"

Was all Luigi could cry out to his brother before he had the distinct honor of being the first person pulled into the halo's mountain image. Seconds before he'd tried to latch his body onto something so he wouldn't have been subjected to such a fate but had such poor luck that the thing he had reflexively grabbed onto was nothing more than a regular chair that was sitting nearby.

"SIIIIIRR, HEEELLPP UUUSSSSS, SIIII-"

The turtle guards unwilling followed Luigi into the halo almost immediately after he entered it when they both failed to gain enough speed to make it to safety before it pulled them into itself.

"KAAAMEEEEEK! SHUUUT THIS THING DOOOWWNN!"

Bowser attempted to yell over the near hurricane level winds to his minion magician but alas, it was only now that he discovered Kamek had completely vanished shortly after his machine had started to malfunction.

While Bowser thought about how he would beat Kamek to a pulp if he survived this ordeal, the chain that was holding up Princess Peach's cage gave into the power of the winds, causing her to helplessly fly towards the halo.

"Mario! Help me!"

These were the last words from the captured princess before she too was pulled into the unforgiving portal in a similarly unceremonious way comparable to how the others had been before her.

CRASH!

The ceiling of the laboratory had finally given way to the winds as the halo continued to suck things into itself at breakneck speeds with no signs of slowing down or stopping anytime soon. It was because of this large hole above itself and the previously destroyed front door of the castle that the halo was now able to pull things in from outside of the structure's walls.

Yes, using the castle as a funnel to amplify its already impressive sucking powers by a massive magnitude, the halo brought all manner of inanimate objects, living creatures and everything in-between into itself from far and wide over this odd world's whole geography. Even things which were much larger than the halo itself fit inside by literally shrinking down their overall mass until they could squeeze inside of it, once again showcasing this world's extremely inconsistent physics in action.

Despite all of the chaos now going on around him, Mario was miraculously still inside of the room.

As he continued to hold onto the edge of the laboratory's entrance he had just managed to grab onto for his life, which had required him to let go of and lose his mallet to the halo, Mario could barely hear all of the chaos behind himself breaking out. The screaming, the crashing and the struggling from anything unfortunate enough to become caught in the portal's current made Mario wish that he could help out somehow but of course he couldn't do anything right now since he too would be pulled into the portal if he attempted to move from the wall he clung to. At the very least, he could try to see what had caused this to happen.

Mario tried to pry his own eyes open so he could get a glimpse of what was going on behind him and from what little he could see through his almost shut eyes, was Bowser. He had retracted his arms, legs and head into his shell at some point and was trying to twirl away from the halo as quickly as he could but even with his best efforts he still wasn't getting very far.

"THIIIS IS AAALL YOUR FAAAAAUULT, MAAARIOOOOO!"

Bowser shouted that out at Mario right before he was hit by something that came in through the gaping hole where the ceiling had once been and was pulled through the portal as so many others had been before him.

Mario still held onto the wall, thinking that if he could just assess the situation maybe he could figure out what his next best course of action would be. Well as fate would have it, Mario's plan seemed to work out.

After another minute or two of their unstoppable onslaught had passed, the winds died down to the point that Mario could let go of the wall and give his now sore hands, arms and body a moment to rest. He was tired from having to overwork all of his muscles like that but he couldn't fully relax yet.

Quickly, Mario turned himself around and focused his gaze back to the laboratory. As soon as he did, he realized several things.

The first realization was that the wall of machines now had many gaps throughout itself, the new hollow spots served only to highlight the lack of mechanisms in their place that were no doubt important to the halo's core functions. Second was that the once pronounced humming sounds that the halo had been emitting before were now little more than ear grating buzzing sounds that stopped and started again at short random time intervals. Thirdly was the halo itself looked like it was just about ready to fall apart now and the image it showed was flickering at a very rapid speed.

That was all the information he needed.

Mario didn't have time to consider what was going on, what had gone wrong or think through what the future repercussions of this would be. All Mario knew was that his Brother and the Princess had been sucked into that portal and that was all he needed to know.

He struck a very unique looking mid-air pose as he jumped straight into the portal, leaving whatever worries he had outside of it.

Just after he vanished from this world into the portal along with all of the others that had been pulled through it before him, the flickering image it hardly kept alive fully disappeared and the halo fell apart into tens of pieces onto the cold stone floor below. What was left of the wall of machines broke away from itself piece by piece, letting the blue liquid that it had once held in place spill out onto the floor. This left the laboratory no more than a completely destroyed mess, as a deafening silence overtook the once formidable fortress.

…

"Thanks to you, my dream of obtaining the Ryuukotsu is gone! But I won't let it end like that! I will at least have the pleasure of taking that 30,000,000 beri head of yours! Surrender now!"

Those words were what a man with a rather odd looking purple hair style and a simple light gray suit had chosen to use as a threat against a group of five people standing on the deck of a ship in front of him. He glared at each of them through his eyes, which were squinted so tightly that they looked to be shut.

He burned with an unmatchable hatred for them all since they stopped him from achieving his goal of acquiring immortality and was now sure as hell he was going to get revenge on them for what they had done.

The people in question were at a stand off with this man and would've started fighting him already but they were in the middle of some of the most ridiculously powerful currents they had ever come across and were in no position to fight anyone right now, as their ship could be easily capsized if things got out of hand.

The group just stared at the man since and had no idea on how to deal with him. If they fought him, they risked losing the ship and drowning. If they didn't fight him, he would surely kill the ship's captain for his bounty.

It looked like he had them all right where he wanted them.

...aaaaaa…

"Huh?" The purple haired man said to no one in particular.

He and the crew of the captured ship could barely make out what sounded like someone yelling over all the noise coming from the harsh waves which roughly splashed against their vessel.

...Aaaaah…

Yup. Someone was definitely yelling from somewhere nearby but nobody could see who it was or pinpoint where exactly the yell was coming from.

"Is this some kind of trick to distract me!? I wont hesitate to sink this whole ship right now if it is!"

Although he worded that sentence like a threat, the purple haired man said it more so to reassure himself that this wasn't some elaborate trap to divert his attention from the task at hand.

One of the ship's crew members, a man with three swords by his side, after a little bit of searching had managed to locate the source of the yell a little too late to do anything about it. He could only let his jaw hang open after he spotted a person in red and blue flying through the air towards their ship at a very high speed.

Particularly, he was heading straight for the ship's stowaway.

"AAAAAHHH-"-SLAM!-CRASH!

Before anyone could so much as blink, a small series of events happened in rapid succession of one another.

The purple hair man received a direct hit to the side of his torso from the red and blue person that the man with three swords had seen flying towards the ship. This sent the purple haired man and the red and blue person barreling all the way to the back handrail of the ship, where the purple haired man loudly yelped in pain after having something slam into his side very quickly and from out of nowhere.

Through his still squinted eyes, he looked down and recognized the thing that had just hit him was a small man. He was going to kill him he decided but first, he allowed himself to faint after he realized that whoever this was might have fractured a rib or two of his when he hit him.

Shortly after that, the person in red and blue stood up and looked quite dizzy after landing head first on the ship's resident hostage taker.

"Oh, mama mia." Were the first words that the second surprise guest the ship's crew had today said as he tried to steady himself against a handrail.

Once he succeeded in doing so, he blinked multiple times as he looked over the five people he noticed were standing before him.

The first person he saw was a man with some sort of smoking stick protruding out from his frowning mouth. He wore an all black suit with a matching tie and pair of dress shoes along with a blue and black stripped, button up, classic collar shirt underneath his suit's top. He had nose length, well kept blonde hair which covered up one of his eyes while his other eye made him look like he was startled and slightly angered by something. He also had an oddly curly eyebrow above his visible eye that was twitching slightly.

Next he saw a tanned man with puffy lips and a long nose sticking out from his face. He was wearing a simple pair of brown overalls with no shirt on underneath and a pair of green work boots. He had a large piece of white cloth tied around his waist and a purse of sorts hanging down from his right shoulder. On his right forearm he wore a long blue and white stripped wrist band. He had big, curly, black hair that was sticking out from underneath a green and black stripped bandana on his head, on which sat a set of odd looking goggles. This man was totally blown away by something, as could be figured out by the way he stood perfectly still with his mouth hanging limply open while a glass like glaze took over his eyes and sweat formed on his forehead.

The next person was the only woman present from who he could currently see. She wore a short, dull orange skirt with two dark orange circles stacked on top of each other on either side of the garment in a pattern. She had some very comfortable looking brown, fuzzy, ankle high boots on and a simple white t-shirt with blue hem and thick blue stripes placed in spots around its chest and upper arms. She had chin length bright orange hair and brown, large, cat-like eyes. Her face carried an expression pretty similar to the guy with the long noses.

Now he was looking at the most angry person here by far. He was wearing a pair of very dark, slightly baggy green pants and a matching color pair of boots. He had a black and lighter shade of green stripped waist band on as well. He wore an unbuttoned white polo shirt and had a piece of the same color cloth as his pants tied around his upper left arm. His hair was lime green and very short. His left ear had three, long, thin golden earrings hanging down from it by about an inch and a half. He also had three sheathed katana hanging from his waist. His face carried a little bit of surprised look to it like most of the other people present but he hid it well behind a wall of anger as he eyed this new intruder up and down. It almost looked like he was sizing the man up so he would be able to tear him apart at a moments notice.

Finally, the new man on board looked at the last member of the ship's crew. He was wearing a red sleeveless button up vest and a pair of blue jean shorts which he had wrapped upwards at the ends of both of the garment's legs. He wore a pair of wooden light brown sandals and he had a stitched scar under his left eye. He had spiky, unkempt, jet black hair sticking out from underneath a straw hat with a red band going around its base. This man was the only person present who wasn't surprised by the red and blue man who came from the sky. In fact, his expression was virtually impossible to read as he stood still with a masterful poker face covering up whatever he was thinking about.

Everyone on the ship just stared at the man and their now knocked out assailant behind him in silence as they waited for him to do something.

Most people on board twitched a little bit when the man looked to the left of himself, then back at all of them. He then looked to the right of himself and back at the crew once more. He blinked a couple of times and remained quite for a few more seconds before he waved, flashed a big grin and blurted out a greeting in a very carefree and cheerful voice.

"Hello!"

The man in the straw hat responded almost immediately by waving back with a large smile of his own.

"Hi there, I'm Luffy!"

"Don't just go around telling people who fell out of the sky who you are!"

The long nosed guy butted in with quite a bit of concern in his voice. The look on his face as he said that was very reminiscent of someone the new person kn-

"Luigi! Peach!"

With those words being said in a high pitched voice, the man became a flash of motion as he started to run around the deck, while looking off in all directions as if trying to find something. As this event played out, most of the previous tension started to disappear as the crew now looked at the man with varying levels of confusion.

Save for the man wearing the Straw Hat who suddenly made a dash for the front of the ship.

"Oi, were about to break through the clouds!"

Everyone had forgotten about what was happening right now thanks to all the ruckus that had just unfolded before them but they all remembered what was going on when Luffy called out, which everyone reacted to by joining Luffy at the front of the deck.

Everyone save for the man with three swords.

His eyes were still firmly locked on the man who only stood slightly above his own waist, he was not willing to let him out of his sight until he knew exactly what this guy was up to. Fortunately for him, the new guy ran to the front deck as well to see what everyone else was looking at. He followed a small distance behind the short man with a hand sitting on the topmost of his three swords hilts, prepared for anything that could happen.

"AWESOME! We're above the clouds!"

Indeed, Luffy wasn't lying with this statement.

The ship was in the process of going up a canal situated on a massive mountain's face at an impossibly steep angle. The water that surrounded the ship refused to listen to gravity and continuously flowed upwards towards the sky, which had an unanticipated yet enjoyable side-effect for all present.

To say the sight just ahead of them was breathtaking would be an understatement.

Thanks to the altitude the ship was at most of the stray water droplets that flew away from the summit of the mountain, after the stream they were sailing on collided with three other streams of water which also came up the Mountain's face, instantly froze in the sky above. This gave off the illusion that the air itself sparkled at the summit as the many small chunks of freshly frozen ice flew through the air with ease, while the sun gleamed down from above acting as a natural spotlight to the beauty below.

The crew were all amazed by this sight when an unfamiliar voice shouted from behind and tore them all back to reality.

"Whoa!"

It was a shame that they had to look away from the miracle of nature happening before them but all eyes were quickly back on the short man who fell from the sky not even five minutes ago.

"Hey, Mustache man!"

The short man looked up towards Luffy, who was currently sitting on the top of the figurehead which jutted out from the front of the ship. From his perspective, it looked like some sort of characterized ram.

"Who are you?"

The man flashed another big smile before twirling around in place, taking his red hat off his short brown hair and holding it in his right hand out from his side as he proudly declared loudly enough to be heard over the rapids-.

"It's-a-me, Mario!"

Before another word could be said, the ship had reached the summit of the mountain and because of the waves which all crashed into each other at its peak, the ship was thrown quite high into the air. Luffy still managed to yell out what he wanted to at Mario though, through a massive smile to boot.

"Yosh! Welcome on board Mario!"

Luffy broke into laughter as the ship continued to fly upwards into the sky.

It was here, high above the mountain of unbelievable waterways that for a small fraction of time, all of the crew's worries and fears were briefly forgotten as it felt like they were sailing out into the bright blue open sky which had always been just above, just slightly out of reach for their whole lives.

Regardless of how each person may have wished this small magical moment would never end, as the saying goes, "what goes up, must come down". Everyone started free falling through the sky for a moment before they all latched onto the nearest part of the ship they could reach and held onto it for their lives.

While everyone shared a scream together, the ship crashed back down onto the only stream of water that flowed down the mountain.

After the ship began its steep descent at the same speed it had climbed up to the sky, the crew all took a moment to reflect on their own personal goals they set for themselves in silent thought, forgetting about everything else that had happened today for the time being.

Everyone but Luffy that is, who shouted what was on his mind.

"This is it, the greatest ocean in the world, the Grand Line!"

He smiled from ear-to-ear as he looked over the vast body of water at the base of the mountain.

"And down there somewhere, down there is the legendary treasure- One Piece!"

Luffy threw his fists in the air and shouted two final words at the top of his lungs.

"WE'RE OFF!"

Mario had no idea where he was, where his friends were or who these people really were but somewhere deep inside of himself, he knew things would work out just fine by the time this was all over. For now though, he decided he just wanted to shout alongside Luffy.

"LET'S-A-GO!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II: Getting to know the crew!/In the belly of Laboon!

Mario was having the time of his life right now.

It felt like he was on a brand new amazing roller coaster that had loop-de-loops sprinkled throughout its track to keep you in a state of a constant adrenaline high.

He was locked firmly in place with one hand on a nearby guardrail and the other keeping his hat in place atop his head, as he stood on the deck of the ship which was traveling along a canal helplessly fast to the base of the giant mountain it had found itself on. All the while, most of the nearby water was being stirred up enough that it became a heavy fog which covered up most of the view from the ship outwards.

Even so, Mario would have remained there watching the water he could make out through the thick mist go by for hours more if there had been no interruptions to his sight seeing. However unfortunately for him, someone on board this ship still had no trust in him to even the slightest extent. The sword which he'd just noticed hovering in the air rather closely to his neck tipped him off on that.

Mario calmly looked over his shoulder and saw that the wielder of the blade was the green haired guy from before.

"Oi, you still haven't told us who you are."

The expression the swordsman had across his face as he said this to Mario portrayed two sentiments very clearly.

One part of his face was cold and uncaring, he truly would do anything to this man that he deemed necessary to protect the rest of this ship's residents. The other part was simply unfiltered intimidation obviously meant to scare the man wearing red and blue into talking about anything he wanted him to talk about. It was an expression he had only mastered through years of practice no doubt.

This, along with the sword he still let hang next to Mario's neck in the air, would have scared practically anyone else into begging for their life on the spot.

So you could imagine the swordsman's surprise when the shorter man simply grabbed his free hand and shook it with a complete lack of fear present anywhere on his person.

"Mario! Super Mario!"

"I already know your name! Where the hell did you come from!?"

If the swordsman was trying, he completely failed at masking his anger as he shouted at the mustached man who spoke to him like they had known each other for years.

Mario was decidedly unaffected by his outburst though and promptly began to speak in total gibberish.

This left swordsman with no clue as to what Mario might be saying and put him in a situation where he could only look on in a mixture of confusion and irritation as Mario articulated certain things he "said" with mouth-made sound effects and excited arm movements.

This went on for about fifteen seconds before he had heard enough.

"ARE YOU TRYING TO PISS ME O-"

"AAAAAAAHHH!"

Right before the swordsman could finish shouting at Mario, everyone else on the ship suddenly erupted into horrified screaming, which made him immediately tear his eyes and attention away from Mario to find out what was the matter.

Now, keeping in mind that the swordsman looked up from Mario expecting to see something which was at the very least incredibly distressing, nothing could have adequately prepared him for what he could see when he did just that.

What he was greeted with, was without a shred of doubt, the single most gigantic blue whale he had ever seen in his life sticking its head straight up out of the water dead ahead of the ship.

Though no words could truly give the mammoth of a mammal the verbal justice it deserved. It must have been a hundred -no- a thousand times larger than the ship, as only its head could properly be accounted for seeing as the rest of its body was still completely submerged. It had one row of pointed teeth lining its mouth and a great many scars running over the front of its face. The scars cut so deeply that they appeared like they were canyons made from flesh.

Although he was looking at the whale and knew it was real, the swordsman still couldn't properly process the reality placed in front of him. So it was a good thing that the long nosed guy processed it for him.

"IT'S A WHALE!"

"What do we do!?"

"Do we fight it!?"

"IDIOT, we can't fight something that big!"

"We're 'gonna crash if we keep this course! What are we 'gonna dooooo!?"

The crew were now yelling over one another in a chaotic clash of panicked voices, which were all at once trying to figure out a way to avoid crashing into the wall of whale flesh which blocked their ship's predetermined path.

As they did so, Mario, rather then joining in the manic frenzy of fear everybody else had started, opted to instead take this in what must have been a superhuman level of stride. He simply sat down on the ship's deck and whistled in a slightly impressed way at the whale once, before he proceeded to quietly stare at it with a purely neutral face.

It was highly possible that Mario's mind might have been broken by the sight and he'd gone completely insane on the spot.

"Wait, I can't see its eyes anywhere, It must not have seen us yet!"

After what the now not so flabbergasted man wearing the black suit said had reached his ears, the swordsman noticed an opening between the whale and the sides of the cliffs which surrounded the ship now that it had reached the base of the mountain.

"We need to go to that opening! Turn hard to port!"

"We can't, the helm's broken!" The immediate and disheartening response came from the long nosed guy.

"We have to try! Get in there!" The swordsman shouted back as he made a dash from the ship's deck to the room with the busted helm.

When he had latched onto the tiny fragment of wood that was left of the helm from some previous encounter, the suited man and the long nosed guy had both grabbed onto it as well. They all tried to turn the ship together with no results.

This left only the woman, Luffy and Mario on the deck together, where they found themselves unable to stop staring at the unmoving whale in front of them.

Luffy gritted his teeth in frustration as he tried and failed to come up with an idea to remove the miniature mountain of a whale from their path. The woman couldn't believe her eyes still and was on the verge of breaking down and crying, so much so that her knees gave out beneath her as she fell to the deck from the shock of seeing a living creature as huge as the one right in front of her.

As for Mario… well, he wasn't nearly as impressed as any of the others.

"Hmph."

The woman and Luffy looked over at Mario, saw him stand up and calmly start making his way towards the front of the ship's deck.

"Oi, you have a plan?" Luffy said.

Mario didn't look back or answer.

Instead he continued to walk up along the deck until he was at the furthest forward point of the ship he could get to. When he stood there, he looked up the whale's body in silence for a few short seconds before clenching both of his hands into tight fists.

Focusing, Mario then opened both of his hands and faced their palms towards each other while he held his arms wide apart at the right side of his body. Doing this had somehow allowed him to create a fireball in the space between his hands.

"WOOOW! SO COOOOOL!"

Luffy screamed in admiration at the fire powers he discovered his guest possessed, while the woman just let her mouth hang open as she gazed at the short man with a look of complete astonishment on her face.

Keeping his focus Mario let the fireball grow in size until it was slightly larger than the upper half of his body. When it hit that size, Mario made a perfectly vertical leap from the ship's deck into the air, then sent the fireball flying forward towards the whale's underside as he shouted his battle cry of choice.

"Heyah!"

KA-BOOM!

Milliseconds went by like hours as everyone except for the still star struck Luffy watched in shock and terror as the fireball blew up on impact against the whale. The explosion that subsequently occurred created a powerful shock wave that traveled through the air, which helped significantly in slowing the ship's speed back down to a much more controllable level.

Seeing that his attack landed a direct hit, Mario quickly checked to see what it had done to the whale but when he found out it did virtually nothing, not even so much as leaving behind a scratch on the whale's hide, he turned around to face the ship's crew and meekly shrugged.

"IDIOT!"

Everyone save for Luffy screeched this at Mario in an almost rehearsed sounding unison at the irreversible action he had just done.

Luffy didn't shout because, while the shock wave did prevent their ship from smashing into the whale and becoming little more than a pile of planks floating in the ocean, it didn't stop the ship's figurehead ram from colliding with the whale and breaking off from the front of the ship.

"MY SPECIAL SEAT!" Luffy said as he watched the ram head fly through the air before it landed nearby on the deck.

Meanwhile, everyone besides Mario and Luffy had decided not to wait around to see what the whale would do after being hit with a fireball and started to use the ship's large oars to paddle away as fast as they could.

"Why didn't it do anything!?"

"Didn't it feel the fire at all!?"

"Who cares if it did, just row!"

"I'm too young to diiiiieeeee!"

Mario took a mental note that these people liked to yell a lot before he turned away from the now madly paddling men and saw that luffy was looking down at the roughly snapped ram head. Mario felt somewhat guilty for what had happened to it and started walking over to Luffy so he could apologize for being unable to slow the ship more. When he was stood next to Luffy though Mario cast aside his original reason for coming over, when he saw not an expression sadness but one of wrath on his face.

"Hmm?"

Mario stared at Luffy as he remained perfectly still, looking down at his now broken "special seat".

As he did this the ship was just starting to pass underneath the perfectly circular eye of the whale, when Luffy did something unthinkable.

"WHY THE HELL DID YOU NEED TO BREAK MY SPECIAL SEAT YOU JERK!?"

Luffy yelled this loud enough that it could have been heard for miles around as he did something that shouldn't have been possible.

He stretched his arm out to almost a hundred times its normal length, used it to punch the whale's eye directly in its pupil and then casually retracted it like he hadn't just made his arm grow out for the sole purpose of punching a large iceberg sized whale's eye's pupil.

Everyone was again blown away by Luffy's choice of action, although Mario was shocked exclusively by the arm stretching part and not so much the punching-the-biggest-whale-he-had-ever-seen-in-his-life-directly-in-its-eye part.

The small group of people on board the ship had been through one too many heart stopping moments one after another in the last half hour they had been sailing that day and found they couldn't gather the energy necessary to do anything but look at Luffy in the most abjectly mortified way they could.

Nothing needed to be said anymore though, because this had finally gotten the whale's attention.

It moved its unblinking eye downward until it was looking at the spec of a vessel floating next to itself in the ocean, where the on board crew shouted out again in unison.

"IT SEES US!"

Another short but brutally silent moment went by where nothing but the distant sound of waves coming off the mountain could be heard before the whale opened its mouth.

 _MMMMMMMNNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_

With their ship being directly next to the source of this noise, which through its sheer power had caused the ocean to begin to violently vibrate, it isn't hard to understand why everyone on board the vessel was now feeling a large amount of discomfort. It felt like the sound lasted for a full minute, hurting everyone's ears as it went on, forcing each person to make desperate but ultimately futile attempts to block it out.

"You want more!?"

Luffy taunted the grossly oversized mammal no more than three seconds after it had finished its cry.

THWAK!

"SHUT THE HELL UP YOU DUMBASS!"

To which the swordsman and the long nose guy harshly kicked his head together and knocked him to the ground because of just how incredibly unintelligent Luffy had proven himself to be.

Before anything else had a chance to happen, the whale opened its jaw and rested it slightly underneath the surface of the ocean, which in conjunction with its size, created a vortex of air that soon after started pulling the ship and all of the nearby sea water into its mouth. This was slowly but surely forcing the relatively tiny ship further towards the back of its throat with each passing second.

Mario briefly considered just how unlucky he must have been today to be near two different, completely unrelated things that sucked stuff into themselves at extremely high speeds. He was starting to know how dust bunnies must feel whenever they heard a vacuum cleaner turn on.

It wasn't a pleasant feeling to say the least.

The next few moments for everyone were a blur as they were sucked further into the back of the whale's throat.

Luffy fell off of the ship at some point and stretched his arm out again towards one of the whale's teeth to stop himself from falling into the water below. The rest of the people on board entered into a full blown mental breakdown as they all thought their days were numbered. Also, if anybody had been paying attention to him, they would have noticed the purple haired guy from earlier vanished from the spot of the deck he had collapsed on earlier.

The whale then shut its mouth and everything went black for what felt like an eternity.

Then, next thing anyone knew, they all found themselves in the middle of an absolutely gorgeous day.

The ocean was still now, it's water gently brushing against the side of the ship as the sun hung overhead the way it always had alongside a few clouds who lazily floated in place throughout the sky.

Still, nobody dared to so much as say a word, in fear that if they did they would all die on the spot.

"Yahoo! Fantastic!"

However, Mario had no such fears and started to loudly applaud what he reasoned with himself must have been some sort of elaborate magic trick. He happily cheered and clapped to no one in particular.

His reaction to what had just happened was in stark contrast to the rest of the ship's residents who thought that they had all just died. A grim atmosphere overtook everyone else as they knew for a fact, that they had just been swallowed by a whale.

"Hmm?"

Mario turned around and saw that the people he had been traveling with for only a short while now all looked like they had just seen their very first ghost. He started waving his hands in front of each of their faces one by one, trying to get some kind of a reaction from them.

"Is… is this some kind of afterlife?" Said the long nosed guy.

"Well, we did just get eaten right?" Said the swordsman.

"Yeah, we did but... I don't feel dead." said the woman.

Rather than input his own thoughts on what just happened, the suited man silently reached into one of his suit's pockets and pulled out one of his now dampened cigarettes and put it in his mouth. He went to light it before he found that his lighter wasn't in his pocket anymore.

"Shit. Lost my lighter."

Overhearing him, Mario pointed two of his fingers out and a small candle-like flame burst into existence just beyond the tips of his digits. He carefully offered the fire to the suited man who, after some slight consideration, used it to light his cigarette.

Because he _really_ needed a cigarette right now.

He deeply inhaled its end and breathed out a large puff of smoke before offering Mario a very quick show of gratitude.

"Thanks."

When Mario hand waved the gesture, the blonde haired man looked down at him. It took him only a moment to realize that Mario still had no clue who anyone here was, as was apparent by the way his eyes roamed over all of the ship's crew members with a certain amount of curiousness present in them.

"Oi, Mario."

Mario turned back to the suited man who was still enjoying his fire-stick he had lit for him.

"Hmm?"

Without a word of explanation, the blonde haired man lifted his right arm up and pointed to the long nosed guy. Mario silently followed along with his eyes.

"That's Ussop."

He then pointed to the woman.

"That's Nami."

Then the swordsman.

"That's Zoro."

Then himself.

"And I'm Sanji."

He let his arm fall back to his side before looking directly into Mario's eyes with a fierce glare.

"Hurt anyone on this ship and I'll kill you."

"Okey dokey!" Mario gave him a big thumbs up and an even bigger smile.

"Don't sound so happy when I'm threatening you!"

Sanji definitely didn't like how this guy had so far not been phased by anything that had happened. He couldn't tell if Mario was really brave or really, REALLY stupid; though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't leaning towards the latter option.

"Hey everyone, there's an island over here!"

Ussop called out to the crew from the back of the ship before Sanji could contemplate which it was further.

He and their ship's guest made their way to where Ussop had called out from and saw a small island sitting in the water only a short distance away from their ship.

A quaint little yellow house was built on the tiny grass covered island. There was another small blot of land nearby which had a single palm tree growing up from its soil who's trunk was the home of a white fold out lawn chair and a round white table. The tree itself was being used as half of a clothes line where someone's recent wash was still airing out.

This sight prompted Ussop to do what anyone seeing this would do after a whale had swallowed them and their ship whole.

"Oi! We need to know where we are! Is anyone home? Hello?"

Despite his best efforts, none of Ussop's questions received any answers. This left him and the rest of the crew to simply stand on the deck and wait for a reply of some kind that wasn't coming.

Their patience did end up getting them something but it wasn't what anyone was hoping for.

Splash!

"GIANT SQUID!"

Out of the water in-between the island and the ship rose a large white squid with blue spots dotted around it's head and the ends of its tentacles. Oddly, it's mouth seemed to have cork lodged in it. Though it couldn't hold a candle to the whale, the squid was an impressive fifteen times the size of the ship which had found itself dwarfed by a large sea creature twice that day. The squid's arms rose out of the water in an aggressive manner as it looked down at the ship.

Having finished shouting, Nami and Ussop crawled as far back the deck as they could to get away from the squid while Sanji and Zoro prepared to fight it.

"Blooper!"

The short man's one word sentence confused Sanji and Zoro momentarily but they each took after him and followed up with one word sentences of their own, with much more menacing tones in their voices.

"Calamari."

"Ink."

The beast looked down at two men either side of Mario and suddenly felt a little bit of apprehension in attacking them after those threats were thrown at it.

*Click*

The squid turned its head slightly.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Suddenly from somewhere behind the squid, three harpoons were fired and whizzed past its face, over the ship and into the water beyond it, just missing its head by inches. They would have struck the back of its head had they been shot a second sooner, which left the cephalopod rather shaken by what just happened. So much so that it quickly retreated down into the water, leaving everyone to stare at the harpoons point of origin, which was in and of itself an intriguing sight because it turned out they came from the previously closed front door of the tiny island's house.

"Looks like somebody's home." Zoro said.

"Better hope it's a person." Sanji said.

After he scanned the water for a moment and was sure the blooper was gone for good, Mario turned his head to see if Nami and Ussop were alright.

"No more, I wanna go home."

"If Luffy was here, he'd know what to do."

They were lying on the deck whimpering things to one another, which Mario typically would've responded to by assuring them that everything was fine but instead he remained silent and stared at the door while trying to see who had just saved them.

After everyone's piece was said, an outline of a figure stepped into view while staying just far enough inside of the dark house that it remained covered by shadows.

"A ship?" Said a gruff male voice.

Nobody spoke back.

"Hmph."

The figure grunted before it started to pull the ropes connected to the harpoons back towards the island.

"What do you think this guy's deal is?" Sanji said.

"He's probably some kind of weird hermit." Zoro said.

When the figure finished reeling the harpoons in, he stepped out into plain view on the island and cast a glare over the people on the ship.

From the bottom up he wore a pair of brown sandals, some blue jean shorts and a light pink buttoned up t-shirt with a green and yellow graphic design that wrapped around its torso. He had a bracelet on his left arm that was made of large turquoise colored jewels, along with many smaller bracelets which matched the color of his skin on the same arm. Around his neck he wore a green bead necklace with long, green, hair like strands of thread that hung down from the frontmost section of the piece of jewelery.

His face showed his age, he must have been at least fifty. He had a beard that looked roughly like a boomerang on his chin and a moderate amount of hair on the back of his head that hung down slightly past his neck and his eyebrows, though thin, were very well defined. The little hair he had was totally white. What was most interesting about him was that he had what looked to be, ten, big, yellow flower petals covered with purple spots sticking out from above his ears which wrapped around the sides and back of his head.

Now that Mario had seen him and his companions rescuer, he carefully thought about what he wanted to say to the old petal man before deciding to simply be direct.

"Hello!"

"Don't introduce yourself to potentially dangerous people!" Ussop said as he came up to Mario's side and smacked the back of his head.

Grunting again, the petal man started to walk across the island slowly while making sure to keep an icy glare on the ship all the while. Zoro and Sanji watched carefully, trying to see if he was preparing to pull a fast one on them but only found that he really was just walking.

This guy, whoever he was, was doing an excellent job at not breaking his stare to even allow himself a blink as he walked forward.

Sanji felt a cold sweat start to form as he watched the man who effortlessly scared off a giant squid walk at a relaxed pace as if nothing had ever happened. It felt like he was doing this on purpose, trying to make him crack, like he was looking through him, as if he was attempting to dig deep in his soul to find out what kind of person he was but he wouldn't let this old guy get through to him no matter how long he kept this facade up.

The petal man suddenly stopped walking, sat down in the lawn chair beneath the palm tree, grabbed a newspaper from the nearby table and started reading it.

"DON'T IGNORE US YOU ASSHOLE!"

Sanji got no reaction from the old man.

"We'll fight you if that's what you want! We're armed with cannons!" Ussop called out from far back in one of the ship's many cabins.

That made the old man's eyes widened. Not in fear mind you but just at the very prospect of what Ussop was saying.

While keeping the same glare he had been, albeit with much wider eyes now, he let an excessively long period of time pass as he stared at everyone on the ship with a new determination in his gaze.

"Don't. If you were to do that, somebody would die."

Zoro squinted his eyes and tightened his grip on his top katana's hilt, Nami and Ussop clung to each other for their lives while Mario kept quite, satisfied to just let the scene unfold by itself.

Sanji could feel even more sweat collecting across his face as he rapidly lost his cool.

"Oh? And who would that be?"

"Me."

"YOU!?"

Was he toying with them? Was he really messing with them!? Sanji became infuriated by this notion.

"You freakin' old man..."

Zoro grabbed one of Sanji's shoulders.

"Hey, don't get pissed off just yet." Zoro said with a smirk.

"This guy, toying with me..."

Zoro stepped ahead of Sanji to take a shot at talking to the odd petal man.

"Old man, tell me, where are we right now? Who are you?"

The old man's eyes widened again.

He let another large amount of time where he said and did nothing pass by, his glare still present all the while. Mario inwardly began to wonder if this was just how his face naturally looked.

"It's proper manners to introduce yourself first, before asking a stranger questions."

"Oh, right, sorry. I'm Roronoa Z-"

"I am Crocus. I am the keeper of the Twin Capes lighthouses. I am seventy-one years old. Gemini, blood type-"

As Crocus continued to rattle off every single trivial piece of information about himself he could, Zoro had already heard enough.

"CAN I GO KILL HIM NOW!?"

Mario, not liking the idea of anyone dying, latched onto Zoro's arm that was now squeezing the hilt of his topmost sword even tighter than it had been and tried to hold it in place with the hope he would calm down.

"You want me to tell you where you are? You come to my resort, yell rude things at me and you expect me to tell you where you are? Besides, do you people normally get swallowed by whales then forget about it?"

Ussop felt his stomach drop.

"So we really were swallowed… but this doesn't look like the inside of a whale."

Looking up from their ship's deck, Ussop could see clouds sitting still in the blue sky above, there for all the world to see. It wasn't possible that this was a whale's stomach.

"Wait! Does this mean we're going to be digested!?" Nami said.

Again, Crocus widened his eyes as he still kept the same glare he had been and again, he let a long amount of time where nothing happened pass by. It wasn't really scaring anyone anymore though. Everyone, save Mario who seemed very much like he was a man of few words, shouted together at the man.

"Would you stop doing that!?"

"Can't you people appreciate a good running gag?"

"A GAG!?"

Undeterred by their obvious irritation with him, Crocus pointed to a large wooden door no one had yet noticed standing in the middle of the ocean.

"If you want to leave, the exit is right there."

"WE CAN LEAVE!?"

While everyone shouted again, Mario took a look at the closed door floating far out in the water.

At the sight of it, he let a smile take hold of his face. He hadn't had a good opportunity to stretch his legs out since he had gone through that portal yet and the distance between the ship and the door was fairly large. It looked like a challenge purposely made for the person who had been given the title of "Jumpman".

Errk. Errk. Errk.

Ussop, being the only person that heard the subtle sound of creaks coming from the deck's floorboards was also the only person to investigate the source of them by turning around. It was only then that he saw Mario had caused them by backing up until he was standing right in front of the ship's handrail.

"Huh, what are you do-"

After he was sure he backed up as far as he could, Mario started to sprint ahead. He only made it a few steps before he jumped up into the air with an arm extended above his head, at the apex of his jump he reached just over the top of the ship's mast.

"Hoh."

Once Mario landed he made sure to maintain his speed as he quickly got back up in the air, this time throwing his arms far behind his back to help boost himself a little further. This jump managed to reach twice as high as his last did.

"Ohoh."

It was right around now when everyone on the ship had turned around to see why the various grunts and thuds were happening.

Mario didn't see anyone turn to face him though as he had just landed right in front of the handrail and immediately entered into a fully crouched position. That pose only lasted for about half a second though before Mario leaped out over the ocean and practically flew all the over to the door in the distance.

"Yahoo!"

Still, to describe exactly how much space there was between the door and the ship would make the feat that Mario had just accomplished sound, as many things in this world did, impossible.

There must have been at least a solid two hundred yards of water sitting between the ship and the exit, so you could imagine the ship's crew mates collective reaction when Mario not only cleared the distance in a single bound but also stuck the landing on a tiny walkway built on the door.

To put it lightly, they couldn't believe their eyes.

"EEEEEHHH!?"

Mario cleared this huge gap between them and the door in one jump. _One jump_. He had somehow not even rocked the ship when he launched himself from the deck into the air. What he had done just shouldn't have been possible.

When that thought crossed her mind, Nami immediately knew how he accomplished this.

"Of course! Mario must have eaten a devil fruit!"

"Ooh, that would make sense!"

"NAMI-SWAN IS SO SMART!"

"What kind of devil fruit would give you super jumping and fire powers?"

Nami, Ussop, Sanji and Zoro all continued to discuss different possible explanations for the source of Mario's powers as Mario himself, being totally oblivious to the misinformation his new companions were creating about him, repeatedly looked up and down the door he was admittedly a little surprised he was now standing on. That was until he realized that he had no clue how to open it.

Deciding to put his good 'ol communication skills to the test, Mario spoke again in a language that almost sounded like he was making it up on the spot and very politely asked Crocus how he could open the door.

Crocus was, as one should expect by now, still holding the same scowl and glare on his face from before even though they had lost any persuasive power they had long ago, while listening to Mario speak. His attention quickly went back to the ship though, where he delivered a very insightful message.

"I think the short one is missing some key parts upstairs."

Mario frowned a little bit when he heard that but otherwise remained still.

"Never mind him, why do we need to use that door to leave? Couldn't we just sail off in any direction?" Zoro said as he gave up trying to understand Mario's powers for now.

"Oi, Zoro…"

Zoro and company turned to look at Ussop who himself was looking up at one of the clouds overhead.

"If you look at the sky closely enough… You can see that everything, even that seagull… it's all a painting! It's a painting on the inside of the whale's stomach!"

"I like to have fun."

"WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR STORY!?"

 _MMMMMMNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRR_

As soon as Ussop finished shouting at Crocus the whale started to move, which caused massive waves to crop up throughout the ocean of acid that the ship and island were sitting in. The ship began roughly bobbing along with the currents to stay afloat, forcing everyone on board to grab onto whatever they could for support. Mario had also quickly grabbed onto the railing of the walkway he was stuck on for his own support.

Amongst the now rather noisy people which had invaded his one man resort, Crocus spoke to himself just loudly enough to be heard by everyone on the ship, as he let the glare he had kept since he'd met them finally fall off his face.

"He's started again."

Nami was the first to look over at Crocus' island, both wondering if he would be alright and curious to see what he meant by that but forgot about both of those reasons when she saw what the island Crocus had built his house on really was.

"Look! That's not an island, It's an iron ship!"

Yes it was. The man-made island bobbed along the top of the acid along with their ship, just managing to float above all the many corrosive currents that threatened to disintegrate anything they touched.

"You're right! The whole base of the island is made of iron!... Which means that if we don't hurry up and get outta' here, our ship is gonna' be digested!"

Ussop cringed at the thought of being eaten alive before he yelled a question out at Crocus.

"Oi, what do you mean started!? What's going on!?"

"Laboon has started ramming his head against the Red Line."

 _MMMNNNRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA_ CRASH! _MMMMMMNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRR_

Like a ton of bricks hitting her at once, a sudden realization about the whale came to Nami.

"Of course! The whale wasn't moaning because Luffy hit it, it was moaning because of the scars on its face! it's in pain!"

Ussop quickly caught on to what Nami was implying.

"So, you think that old guy is trying to kill it from the inside?"

"Probably."

"That isn't important, right now we need to go find out what happened to Luffy, our ship will dissolve if we stay here much longer anyway." Zoro said.

 _MMMMNNNNRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAA_ CRASH!

Even from the inside of Laboon's stomach, his head smashing against the Red Line could be heard clear as day. Despite the whale's size, it couldn't hope to ever scratch the mountain that dwarfed even him but he was doing more than enough to rock the small ship inside of himself to the point that it couldn't risk moving without capsizing.

"We can't get to the exit in these conditions!" Ussop said.

"We have to try, get to the oars!" Zoro said.

In the midst of all the violent shaking, Mario had become totally detached from everything that was happening around him as hung onto the platform he'd landed on before, desperately trying not to fall off into the acid beneath him. Considering this, when Mario went to look back at everyone and saw Crocus suddenly dive into the whale's acid, it made perfect sense that he instantly let out a shout of concern for the old man.

"Whoa!"

It was just loud enough that the ship's crew caught the tail end of Crocus jumping into the whale's stomach acid ocean.

"Why did he do that? He's going to be digested if he goes under there." Zoro said in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

When those words reached Mario's ears, he let his hero side go into autopilot mode as he took another huge leap into the stomach acid after Crocus without a seconds hesitation. The crew of course got front row seats to watch the man who had continually surprised them since he appeared willingly splash into the acid for some incomprehensible reason.

"WHY DID HE DIVE IN TOO!?" Ussop and Sanji said together through bulging eyes as they watched Mario jump to what they thought was his death.

"We can't worry about him right now, help me steady the ship!" Zoro said.

Underneath the surface of the slightly green liquid, Mario was surprised to feel no immediate discomfort in the form of a burning sensation across his body but instead only the slightest of tingling on his skin. He blinked a few times before he started to look around for Crocus. When he spotted him diving deeper into the whale's stomach he took off after him.

As he and Crocus reached the deepest point of the acidic ocean, Mario saw a great many things lined this bottom area in such a way that it resembled a graveyard.

First thing Mario noticed were the several different types of ships which varied greatly in size and make from one to another. Most of the ones down here had old, partially dissolved designs sewn onto the main masts of their long since sunken hauls. Some of the ships had jolly rogers like the ones pirates would use, others had the word marines in bold blue lettering on top of an anchor on a plain white mast, others still had been here for such a long time that whatever had been on them before had completely faded away with the passage of time.

Along with the ships that were trapped in the whale's belly were more skeletons of both fish and people than Mario could count and so much partially digested treasure that the whale could easily double as a living bank. All this imagery together gave way for the whale to have a rather unfriendly atmosphere associated with it in Mario's mind.

In spite of all of the things he saw, Mario kept swimming after Crocus, dead set on finding out why the old man was down here to begin with.

The answer came when he saw Crocus approach a ladder towards the surface of the acid. After Crocus climbed out of the artificial ocean using said ladder Mario climbed out after him, only to then find out he was back below the platform he had been on before he jumped in after him initially. Unbothered by basically going in one large circle, Mario purposely stayed at just a large enough distance away from Crocus to remain unnoticed by him as he continued to follow him.

If the ship's crew had seen Mario making his way back up to the top of the same platform he had been on before, they probably would have yelled at him for throwing himself into a body of acid for no reason. However before anyone could have seen him to do just that, there was a loud noise overhead.

CRASH!

luffy, along with some woman and man no one had ever seen before, suddenly came bursting out of a hatch that was built high up on the inside of the whale's stomach. This naturally ended up with them all left to fly through the air helplessly.

Everyone on the ship stared up at the three free falling people in varying states of surprise.

"Oh no, Miss Wednesday! We're falling into a body of digestive juices!" The man said.

"Luffy?" Uncertainty lingered on the one word sentence Zoro had said more to himself then to Luffy.

"Hey you guys are alright!… Could you please help me out now?"

Luffy and the two new people splashed straight down into the "digestive juices" of the whale right after he said that.

Mario turned around once he was properly back on top of the platform to make sure Luffy would be okay after he heard him say that. When he saw Zoro and Sanji dive in after him, Mario figured that he would be alright as he returned to trailing behind Crocus, who had just gone through a small door on the walkway which he hadn't managed to see before.

As he followed Crocus down an empty metal hallway, he made sure to stay quiet. Mario just wanted to see what Crocus was really doing here for himself before he made any moral judgments on the old guy.

 _MMMNNNRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_ CRASH!

Mario could still hear Laboon's groaning every couple of seconds and could feel his every slightest movement as he tried to keep his footing inside of the mammal, which, along with him guessing he had a bit to go with Crocus before they reached their destination, made Mario's focus instinctively shift to Laboon's voice.

 _MMMMNNNNRRRRRRRR MMMMNNNNNNNN_

Now listening to it more intently, the whale's groaning still sounded as imposing and powerful as it had before but Mario could now pick out what was unmistakably a hidden amount of sorrow in Laboon's cries.

Not only that but although he never would have been able to put his finger on why, Mario somewhere deep inside of himself felt like he knew what made Laboon cry the way he did.

It felt like he had experienced the same type of pain Laboon was suffering from, even though he hadn't so much as an idea about what it was that made him moan the way he did.

Mario's eyebrows fell slightly as he unconsciously walked forward, thinking of all the different ways he might have of been able to help Laboon but none of his ideas gave anything more than short term solutions to a problem he didn't even begin to understand.

Mario's thoughts were cut short when he noticed that Crocus had lead him to the end of the tunnel, to a big room that would have looked a lot like a regular storage area filled with barrels and crates, had it not been for the large syringe that was pointed at a small square gap in the metal paneling of the room. The inside of the gap was filled with a soft looking, pinkish substance that twitched slightly with Laboon's every subtle movement.

"Stop Laboon. Please stop hurting yourself like this." Crocus said as he positioned himself behind the syringe.

"I only have a little sedative left, I'll need to make more if you keep doing this."

Crocus pushed on the plunger of the syringe until it's needle pierced into what Mario assumed was some of the whale's flesh. As soon as the syringe's contents entered into Laboon, he stopped moving. The thrashing, the groaning and the shaking all stopped in almost no time at all.

 _MMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNN_

When what Crocus was doing dawned on Mario, he let out a sigh of relief.

He knew that Crocus wasn't a bad guy.

"Not even you can hope to break the wall of the Red Line, the mountain that separates the world's oceans, Laboon."

Crocus stood there in silence for a moment, mourning the whale's needless suffering. Then when he turned around and saw Mario standing back at the doorway, he started to make his way towards him while speaking in a firm voice, his glare returning as he did so.

"I don't know about where you come from but around here it's considered rude to spy on someone like that."

Trying to plead his side of the case, Mario started to talk in gibberish once more, telling Crocus he had only followed him to make sure he was all right after he dived into the acid before.

Although he couldn't understand a single word coming from his mouth, Crocus knew that Mario carried no ill will towards him and side stepped the chattering man as he started making his way back to the whale's stomach.

"Nevermind, let's just head back."

After Crocus started back down the hall, Mario followed behind him much more closely and started trying to categorize all of the new information he'd been given so far today.

Luffy. Red Line. One piece. MARINES. Laboon. Fire stick. Gemini.

Mario hadn't needed to take down this many mental notes in a long time and he was starting to feel downright overburdened by all this new information hitting him at once. He thought he would acquire a notebook whenever he next had a chance to, so he could lighten the strain a bit.

His thoughts were interrupted again when he and Crocus finished their walk back to Laboon's stomach, where they spotted Luffy and the two people from before all now sitting on their ship's deck safe and sound.

"Why are you two scoundrels still here?" Crocus said.

Mario looked up at Crocus and could instantly tell from his expression that he didn't like these people at all.

"Don't you understand? As long as I still have a pulse, you will never lay a hand on this whale!"

Everyone on the ship, except for the new people, now looked up at where he and Mario stood on the platform above.

It was right after that when Luffy remembered he had absolutely no clue what was going on, which made him say the first thing that came to his head.

"Oi, Mario! What are you doing with that flower guy?"

Mario didn't even get a second to explain anything that happened to Luffy while he was away before the two new people started chuckling as they stood up from the ship's deck, keeping their backs to him and Crocus all the while.

Now that they were standing still and no longer falling into a "body of digestive juices", Mario could get a good look at the pair.

The woman had very long, sky blue hair done up in a long pony tail that reached down to her waist. She was wearing a light green undone coat with big white fluffy trimming and a light and dark blue striped tank top on underneath it. She sported a pair of white short-shorts and white high heel style boots that went half way up her shin.

The man was in a green suit and wore a short orange scarf around his neck which draped over the white ruffled shirt that poked out through his jacket's undone upper half. On his head sat a very fancy looking gold crown over his orange, stylized hair. He also had the number nine placed on both of his checks.

"Regardless of whether or not you stand in our way, we will not stop." The woman said.

"It's our mission to kill this whale, we will not give up so easily. We won't let you stand in the way of our whaling anymore!"

After the man said that, he and the woman turned around, produced their own bazooka and aimed them both at a small area of Laboon's stomach in perfect synchronization with each other.

"We will rip this whale apart from the inside out! Let 'er rip baby!"

"Roger!"

BOOM! BOOM!

Now flying through the air were a pair of cannonballs headed straight for the same area of Laboon's stomach lining, they threatened to destroy it if they managed to reached their target.

Crocus instantly broke into a dash so he could jump in front of the explosives and take them on himself but someone else was a few steps ahead of him.

Mario jumped over Crocus' head out into the air ahead of both the cannonballs and masterfully landed on top of them when they reached him, despite the speed they were traveling at and their relatively small size. The cannonballs instantly lost all of the momentum they had when Mario's feet made contact with them, which in turn created a pair of harmless splashes in the acid below.

For what felt like the tenth time that day, Mario made the crew's collective jaws drop in unison. The woman and man joined in this time as well. Even the normally stoic Crocus was a little taken aback by this foot based feat.

After he did this, Mario used the air he gained from hopping off the cannonballs to launch himself back onto the ship where everyone was waiting for him. When he landed, he was greeted by a choir of shouting voices.

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?"

Luffy was surprisingly the only person who didn't ask Mario this question, because he had decided, for numerous reasons, these new people needed to be taught a lesson.

SLAM!

Without a moment of hesitation, Luffy reeled both his hands back before using them to slam the whalers heads together, knocking them out on the spot.

Thud. Thud.

Mario saw what Luffy had done and looked over at him through the group of his companions stunned faces, which were now split between staring at Luffy and himself.

"Hmm?"

"Just had to hit 'em."

Nami, who was utterly confused by what just happened, looked between Mario and Luffy as they started sharing a smile before she couldn't take it anymore.

"Could someone please explain what's going on!?"

Her question didn't fall on totally deaf ears thankfully.

After the two whalers were tied up, Crocus invited everyone to come over to his small island so he could properly explain what was going on. Everyone was gathered around the fold out chair by the palm tree he was sitting in and were waiting for him to speak.

After some consideration, Crocus choose to open up with a due thank you.

"You two helped me out immensely you know. But why?"

Luffy was busy trying to climb up the tiny island's palm tree while he answered the question.

"I didn't help you. I just didn't want to see that."

Mario was staring intently at the gently rippling stomach acid over the edge of the island when he waved off what he'd done in a way that implied it was no big deal.

He fought bad people. Simple as that.

Nami, still wanting answers, decided to ask some questions before the conversation got sidetracked.

"So what was up with those guys? And what are you doing inside this whale's stomach?"

Crocus pointed at the pair who were tied up nearby before speaking.

"These two scoundrels are from a nearby town. They're after Laboon for his meat, he could feed their whole town for almost three years."

"Laboon?"

"Laboon is the name of this whale. He's an island whale. They inhabit West Blue and are the largest species of whale in the world. As for why I don't want Laboon to be hurt, it's because of the reason he tries to destroy the Red Line and why he cries at Reverse Mountain."

Mario and Luffy were now paying close attention to Crocus' every word, both wanting to know more about this whale.

"What's the reason?" Nami said.

"You see, this whale has a heart like that of a persons and he's been using it to wait for a group of pirates to return here. Waiting for fifty years now..."

…

"...Ugh..."

A body starts to shift.

"...My head..."

A constant pounding is going off in their head.

"...What happened to..."

A pair of bloodshot eyes shoot open in wrath.

"MAAAAARRRRRIIIIIOOOOOOOOOO!"

The King of the Koopas is **not** happy.

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Hey all, TTI here.

It's my first time doing one of these 'author's note' type sections so hopefully it's up to par with everyone else's.

Firstly I'd like to thank everyone who has already favorited and followed this story, it's crazy for me to think I have people waiting around for new chapters in this story already when I've just posted a single one so far. Thank you so much.

Also a big thanks to Dat Crazy Dude for giving me my first piece of constructive criticism. I went ahead and cleaned up the first chapter based on what you said after I looked at it a second time and I agree that it's much easier on the eyes now, so again thank you.

Not a whole lot more to say other than I intend to keep updating this at a fairly quick pace unless I say otherwise.

Stay tuned and all that. =]


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III: You want me to join your crew?/A rival for Laboon!

"I still remember all those years ago when Laboon and I first met."

An almost wistful look began to dance over Crocus' face as he started to tell Laboon's story, while a small crowd of attentive faces waited for the old man to continue.

"I was doing my job like any other day at the twin lighthouses, when a ship of jolly pirates came down over Reverse Mountain as you all have. But next to their ship splashing around in the water, was a small blue whale, which they called Laboon."

Crocus slowly leaned back into his lawn chair as he recalled some finer points of the story which had nearly left him over time.

"Laboon must have traveled alongside those pirates for a long time before reaching Reverse Mountain, because island whales like him only inhabit West Blue and now those pirates were going to sail into the dangerous waters of the Grand Line with Laboon in tow. They thought they had left Laboon back in West Blue but he had swam with them, even to that point, because island whales normally swim together in small groups.

He hesitated a moment before continuing.

"Laboon followed them all the way here because he considered those pirates to be his nakama."

Nakama?

Mario had never heard that word before.

He wanted to ask what it meant but wasn't willing to interrupt Crocus' story, so he just added it to the "things to ask about later list" in his head that had been growing exponentially since he had met all of these people.

"The pirates anchored here at the coast for a few months to heal their wounds and patch their ship in preparation for sailing into the Grand Line. I got used to their company after a while."

Crocus frowned slightly.

"Then, on the day when they were ready to go, the captain of the ship asked me if I could do him a favor. He told me to look after Laboon for three years while they sailed through the Grand Line and he promised Laboon that he would return here for him once they finished their voyage..."

Again, Crocus fell silent for a moment.

"...That was fifty years ago."

Though no sound left anyone's lips, their was a silent instant after Crocus said this where everyone listening had some undefinable feeling of breathlessness.

"Fifty years?" Zoro said.

"You mean that Laboon is still waiting for them even after all this time?" Ussop said.

"That's why Laboon is slamming into the Red Line isn't it? So he can meet up with them again." Nami said.

Crocus nodded.

 _MMMMMNNNNNRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA_

Another moan hit everyone's ears as the medicine's effect started to wane, though this one was still noticeably softer than Laboon's previous ones, which all were thankful for. This sound helped to remind them all that they were still inside of the large whale's stomach.

"Well, for now we should hurry up and get your ship out of here, otherwise it will be dissolved."

Most people nodded in agreement with Crocus' statement.

Crocus dove back into the stomach acid and climbed up onto the platform he and Mario had stood on before and finally unlocked the large door.

Clang!

The door pushed water out of the way as it opened, letting the crew now see it lead into a long, dimly lit metal tunnel which was just spacious enough that the ship everyone was on could sail into it comfortably.

After unlocking the door Crocus swam back to his island-ship, detached the small segment of it with the palm tree from the main island and started to lead the way down the tunnel while everyone else followed closely behind him from back on the deck of their ship.

All remained silent for the first while of sailing down the slightly curved tunnel, as the crew eagerly anticipated an exit from the whale's body but as it became increasingly clear it would take a bit to reach it, Zoro decided to drum up a conversation.

"It's incredible that even with such a large tunnel built inside of him that this whale is still alive."

"Is this more of you "having fun", old man?" Sanji said as he looked down at the motor powered chunk of island Crocus was lounging on.

"This is my doctor 'fun'."

"Doctor?" Ussop said.

"Mm hmm!" Mario nodded to Ussop before he started to speak in gibberish again.

Ussop listened for a bit before he elected to gently press Mario on why he spoke in such a unique way.

"Oi, what's up with your speaking?"

He seriously wanted Mario to explain his speech impediment already as to why, seemingly at random, he could say certain words flawlessly but everything else that came out of his mouth was incoherent gibberish.

He was disappointed by Mario's response as the short man merely tilted his head to one side at his question.

"Just wait here." Ussop said before he turned around and headed into one of the ship's several cabins.

After he left, Mario turned his attention back to the conversation with Crocus.

"…I even used to be a ship's doctor years ago."

"Really? You should join my crew and become our doctor then!" Luffy said with a large grin.

So luffy was the captain of this ship. Mario took down a note of that… His head was starting to feel full.

Crocus let out a subdued laugh. "Ha, don't be dumb. Unlike the six of you young'ins, I don't have the energy left to go gallivanting around the world."

Luffy pouted a tiny bit at that response.

"So you're a doctor. That explains why you're in here, it's probably the only way to treat Laboon." Nami said.

"Yup. When island whales get this big, there's no way to treat them from the outside anymore."

After Crocus said this, everyone saw that they had now come to the end of the tunnel, which looked to be little more than a dead end. Crocus steered his miniature ship over to a ladder built onto the tunnel's metal walls and climbed it until he made it up to a walkway with a wheel at its end. He went over to the wheel and started turning it.

"Alright, here we go!"

Ussop walked back out from the cabin holding something in his hands just in time to see that the wall was actually a door which was starting to slowly split down its middle. As the door opened and light began to pour in, it became clear that this was an exit to the outside of Laboon's body.

Although everyone was happy, Luffy was especially ecstatic at the prospect of not being stuck inside of a fake acid ocean anymore and he let his feelings on the matter show without regret.

"We're back out everyone! We're on the real ocean again!"

Everyone relished in the moment together, they all felt like they finally had a chance to breath again after everything that had happened today but Luffy more so than anyone else could now relax. Surely this kind of relief was to be expected when, all in the same day no less, he watched his crew be swallowed by a whale, nearly been taken for hostage, had someone fall from the sky onto his ship… Ah, that's what he was forgetting.

"Mario!"

Mario snapped his head towards Luffy.

When Mario looked at him, he saw Luffy was looking downwards in such a way that the rim of his straw hat was covering his entire face, stopping Mario from figuring out what expression he currently carried.

"Mario... Do you want to join my crew?" Luffy said as he looked up at Mario while shooting a large grin his way.

That was unexpected.

That was also not something Mario had considered yet. Join the crew of someone he had only met about an hour ago? It certainly would be a risky move on his part. Then again, he was the same person who teamed up with Bowser on more than one occasion. Luffy definitely knew more about how this world functioned than he did and if he was going to find Luigi or Peach, he was going to need a ship to get around in while going through this mostly water world.

He rested his chin on his right hand as he continued weighing the pros and cons of joining Luffy's crew while everyone watched silently. Mario quickly broke out of his deep thought however, all set to give Luffy an answer.

"Here. You know how to draw right?"

However Mario's potential recruitment was interrupted when Ussop appeared from nowhere in front of him and handed something to him.

Mario looked at what he had just been given and recognized it immediately. Well, it was three things actually, a hand sized chalkboard, a small piece of white chalk and an eraser.

Huh.

This wasn't exactly what Mario had been expecting from Ussop but then again he barely knew the guy, maybe Ussop gave everyone he met drawing tools.

Mario started thanking Ussop for the gift in his very unique style of gibberish before he interrupted him.

"We can't understand you! Use the chalkboard!"

Ussop wanted to understand what Mario was saying already and he was more than willing to part with his chalkboard if it meant not having to listen to anymore "alien talk" from Mario. He almost never used the thing anyway so it was no big loss to him.

Mario looked at the chalkboard he was now holding then over at Luffy, who was still smiling and waiting for an answer from over on his broken "special seat", which was laying on the deck where it had crashed earlier. Mario looked down at his gift again, grabbed the piece of chalk with his right hand and began to scribble something down on it for about a half minute. He then held the chalkboard in front of himself, making sure Luffy could see it.

Mario had drawn a highly detailed portrait of himself and Luffy shaking hands on the ship's deck with Zoro, Nami, Ussop and Sanji standing around with large smiles on each of their faces.

"Oh yeah!" Mario said with a grin of his own that was just as large as Luffy's.

Luffy forgot about his broken seat for a moment and ran over to Mario, grabbed him by his hands and started to dance around the deck with him.

"New na-ka-ma! New na-ka-ma! New na-ka-ma!" Luffy said this again and again while he and Mario did a jig across the deck.

Mario looked like he was getting more than a little dizzy from the ordeal but went along with it anyway. Luffy was Mario's captain now after all and if his captain wanted to dance, then a dance is what he would have.

Although the rest of the crew were fairly impressed by Mario's ability to draw, they all had seen his recruitment coming from a mile away and carried on with their own conversation while Luffy celebrated Mario becoming the latest addition to his crew. They would end up having a party for him later tonight anyway if Luffy had any say in the matter.

"It's still crazy to think that Laboon's been waiting here fifty years for those lousy pirates to return. Where could they be?" Ussop said.

"Idiot, this is the Grand Line so they probably died. There's no reason to wait for them anymore." Sanji said.

"This just proves how unpredictable and deadly the ocean on the Grand Line can be compared to a regular one." Nami said.

"Oi! How can you guys say such heartless things!? We don't know if they died, they might still come back for Laboon!" After Ussop said this his eyes started to water up.

"It's such a good story. A whale that trusts in his nakama's promise, no matter how long it takes for them to fulfill it… It's good, right Crocus?"

"It is... But what really happened is even worse than them dying. Those pirates ran away from the Grand Line."

Just like that, the mood took a turn for the dour after Crocus spoke.

"No way… They left Laboon behind?" Ussop said.

Luffy had stopped dancing around now to make sure he heard all that was being said, letting Mario limply collapse onto their ship's deck. Mario was far too dizzy to stand after Luffy's instant one man party he had thrown in his honor came to a sudden stop and opted to remain still on the deck as he tried to figure out how Luffy could stand in three spots at once.

"So if those pirates tried to leave the Grand Line, then they would have had to cross over the Calm Belt." Nami said as she thought about the grave implications of doing such a thing.

Crocus silently acknowledged what she said. "Even if they did make it out of the Grand Line and were alive today, they would never come back for Laboon. The weather. The seasons. The currents. The winds. The Grand Line forces you to toss all common sense and logic about these things out the window and relearn everything you've ever known about sailing. It quickly overwhelms the weak of heart."

"So those spineless Shit-heads ran away without even considering Laboon and their promise." Sanji said.

"They just abandoned the whale? And he's still waiting for them to come back even after fifty years!? That's so cruel!" Ussop said.

"But why haven't you told him about what they did? The whale understands humans right?" Nami said.

"I have told him, more times then I can count. But he won't listen to me."

Crocus thought back to the very first time he had tried to explain what happened to those pirates to Laboon, back when he was still young and Laboon was still patiently waiting for them to return. Crocus remembered how Laboon totally rejected the very notion of the pirates abandoning him here. He could remember the very first time Laboon groaned at Reverse Mountain, he could practically feel the undying faith in those pirates Laboon instilled within that first groan.

"Laboon still believed that his nakama would return for him even after the very first time I told him they wouldn't, it was that same day Laboon started to throw himself against the Red Line and he's continued doing so ever since."

Crocus stood up and looked over at their ship.

"Even if I told Laboon the same thing a million times more, he still wouldn't believe me any more then he does now. His home was with those pirates and in West Blue. If he gives up now, then he'll lose the only hope he has at ever returning home."

All went silent when Crocus finished and all stayed quiet for a short time as they thought about what was said. The silence was only broken when a thought crossed Sanji's mind.

"Y'know old man... even though Laboon was left behind by them, that doesn't mean you have to stay with him. You were abandoned too after all."

Crocus didn't like what Sanji insinuated with that statement.

"Look at the scars on his head! If I were to stop treating them now, Laboon would undoubtedly die soon after! I won't deny that Laboon and I have have an odd relationship but I'm not going to stop now after fifty years so he can kill himself."

Mario could finally stand up now that the world had stopped spinning around himself. He promptly picked up his new chalkboard and stuffed it inside of his overall's right pocket. He then noticed his new crew standing at the edge of their ship. Mario made his way over and saw everyone was slowly digesting whatever had just been said to them.

"AAAAAAAAHHH! AAAHH!"

The sudden yelling that just erupted quickly brought everyone out of their thoughts and back to the present before Mario could join them.

The crew immediately started to search for where the yells were coming from but it took only a second until all saw the source of them was Luffy. He was currently carrying their ship's main mast, which he had somehow managed to tear off the ship, while running almost vertically up the side of Laboon's body.

"Wah?" Mario said.

"That idiot, what's he doing now?" Zoro said.

"It looks like he's gone mountain climbing." Sanji said.

Luffy kept yelling as he ran up Laboon's body in an effort to reach the top of his head where his scars rested. Once he did so, he glanced inside each of Laboon's self inflicted cuts as he continued to run until he found one that had blood slowly trickling out from it. After finding what he was searching for, Luffy used as much of his strength as he could to heave the broken mast over his head and jab it deep into the still sensitive wound, causing much more blood to spill out of the already damaged skin.

"GOMU GOMU NO, IKABANA!"

It was right after Luffy said that, when Mario came to the conclusion that his captain of five minutes had lost his mind.

Firstly, Mario only understood one of the four words that he just said, why was he speaking in gibberish all of a sudden? secondly, he was pretty sure that Luffy liked Laboon, so why did he just stab him in his face with a vital part of their ship? Mario was equally stunned by how his new crew mates, who were the same people that freaked out over a simple cannonball stomp, were so severely under reacting to an event that warranted, in his professional opinion, much questioning of their captain's motives behind his actions.

"Hey, that's our ship's mast isn't it?" Zoro said.

"Yeah it is, he must have broke it off the ship." Sanji said.

"Mmm hmm… QUIT BREAKING THE SHIP LUFFY!" Ussop said.

That attack had hurt Laboon a **lot**.

 _MMMMMNNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_

Now, because Laboon simply resting his jaw underneath the surface of the ocean created a vortex of air that was strong enough to pull a decently sized ship into his mouth in less than a minute, you can imagine how choppy the ocean became when Laboon started throwing his whole body around in a tantrum as he tried to shake Luffy off of himself.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT!?" all of the crew except Mario said.

Everyone latched onto what they could to hold their ground against the waves Laboon created as he lashed out, hoping he would calm down soon. Laboon however wasn't anywhere near done yet. The whale leapt out of the water and violently slammed the whole of its body down onto the Red Line.

CRAAAAASH!

When he connected with the ground, the impact sent huge chunks of earth flying out into the air as Luffy was caught underneath all of Laboon's weight.

"O-Oi, kid!" Crocus said.

"It's okay! Luffy won't die even if Laboon crushes his body!"

As if on cue, Luffy got back up to his feet right after Nami finished speaking.

Luffy seized the opening Laboon had left him as the whale involuntarily convulsed with pain on the Red Line by stretching his arm out and punching Laboon's eye again. Unlike the last time Luffy tried this attack, his fist had much more power behind it and Laboon thoroughly felt it when it hit. Luffy then jumped into the air, stretched his leg out and kicked Laboon's head as hard as he could, this surprisingly managed to knock Laboon on his side.

Down but not out, Laboon leaped back into the ocean after Luffy landed his kick and retaliated with a headbutt which sent Luffy flying into one of the Twin Capes Lighthouse's sides. It was there that Luffy was left to lean against the side of the building as Laboon started charging through the ocean towards him for another blow.

Out of everyone watching, it was Ussop who had decided that this fight had gotten way out of hand since he'd seen an unmoving Luffy after taking the full brunt of such a titanic hit. He pulled a slingshot and some type of ammo from his purse and hastily loaded the weapon.

"We need to save Luffy!"

Ussop began to steady his aim on Laboon's eye so he could distract the whale from finishing his attack but just as he got a clear shot ready, someone grabbed his arm.

"Wha- Mario, what are you doing? Luffy needs help! He'll be killed if we don't do something!"

Ussop looked down at Mario, who himself was staring straight ahead at where Laboon was rapidly approaching Luffy, wanting some sort of explanation from the red and blue clad man. He was surprised when all Mario gave him in response was a stern look and a single, firm shake of his head before he turned his gaze back to the fight. Ussop couldn't understand why he suddenly felt this way but he trusted Mario enough in this moment to not attempt to intervene any further with the fight.

Mario was just baffled still, how in the world did what Luffy was doing make any sense at all?

He had already thought about leaping over to Luffy and saving him from the rampaging Laboon… but Luffy was the captain. Mario decided to respect Luffy's weird decision to fight and stood on the deck watching passively since doing so but when he saw Ussop trying to intervene, he knew for some unexplainable reason he couldn't let him.

Laboon was still charging through the ocean, readying himself for impact, building more and more power with every drop of water he swam through.

 _MMMMMMNNNNNN-_

"It's a draw!"

Laboon stopped his assault just before he smashed head first into the coast, caught completely off guard by Luffy's sudden declaration of a draw. He focused his eyes and ears on where the captain had come to rest.

Luffy calmly stood up from the ground, dusted himself off and put his straw hat back on his head.

He pulled a large smirk before speaking. "I'm pretty strong, huh?"

Laboon didn't move.

"You wanna' beat me now right? Because our battle didn't finish, we'll have to fight again."

Laboon didn't move.

"Your nakama might have died but from now on I'll be your rival, so we'll need to duel again sometime to decide which one of us is the strongest! Once we sail to the end of the Grand Line, I'll return here so we can finish this. I promise."

Laboon started to shake.

 _MMNNMMMMNNNNRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_

If a whale could cry tears of joy, Laboon was right now. His mansion sized eyes had water dripping down from them now that Luffy finished his speech. He hadn't felt like this since the pirates he had known left him here all those years ago.

He was no longer alone.

The humongous whale bellowed out in as happy of a way a whale could as Crocus, Mario and the rest of the crew smiled at the sight before them.

Ussop was about to start cheering Luffy's successful and admittedly unorthodox plan, when he realized how it even had a chance to happen.

"Oi, Mario, how did you know that was Luffy's plan?"

Mario was very impressed to say the least. How Luffy figured out how to handle such a delicate situation so effectively, albeit in a far more brash way than he would have preferred, when he couldn't even think of a way the help Laboon was more then proof enough that Luffy, despite what one might think at a glance, was definitely a grade A captain.

Mario simply shook his head again, smiling as he did.

After Luffy and Laboon's fight came to an end, Luffy asked for someone to bring him paint from their ship so he could put something he called a "fight promise" on Laboon's face. While Luffy worked on his secret project, a few hours passed and the sun began to lower in the sky, covering the world in a soft shade of orange.

It wasn't too long until Luffy finished his painting, which he explained to Laboon would scratch off if he tried to slam his head against the Red Line anymore, effectively making it so Laboon couldn't hurt himself anymore without literally destroying Luffy's promise for a rematch.

It was quite a poetic creation from someone who frequently got called an idiot.

Mario never saw what Luffy painted, as he had been too busy spending his down time helping Ussop try to reattach the mast Luffy had torn off earlier back to their ship. With Mario's help, Ussop managed to finish the job several hours earlier than it would have taken otherwise, allowing him and Mario to also reattach the ram head to the front of the ship.

"There. It's not perfect but It's good enough that it won't fall off when we start sailing. Thanks for helping Mario."

Mario patted Ussop on his back a couple times and let out a loud laugh.

"Hey, are you always this happy?"

"Mm hm!"

"That's gonna' take some getting used to."

Everyone was relaxing now as they all watched their first day on the Grand Line slowly start to come to an end. Mario was helping Ussop finish putting away the tools they had brought out to repair the ship, when Ussop noticed the two whalers had vanished from where they had been tied up on the deck earlier.

"Oi, where did those two whalers go?" Ussop called out to a nearby Nami.

"You mean those two weirdos? They must have run off at some point during the fight. I wonder who they really were."

No one had time to speculate on the issue though because Luffy, having just finished explaining his fight promise's meaning to Laboon, climbed back onto the ship's deck via its gangplank moments after Nami finished speaking. He was covered in splotches of white, black, red and yellow paint from head to toe.

"Yosh. Laboon won't be able to hurt himself anymore!"

Luffy looked over at the mast he'd torn from the ship before and saw that it was already put back in place with a new metal plating somewhat haphazardly holding it upright.

"This looks as good as new Ussop! Now we'll be able to sail again!"

"You idiot! You're the one that broke it in the first place!"

Luffy and Ussop started to get into an argument about what the proper way to treat a ship was, when Mario saw a purple bracelet with a glass orb on it next to his foot on the deck. He bent over and picked it up.

The glass orb had a small metal cap on top that suspended a compass like needle in the air on a small pole. Mario had no clue what it was and would have taken it to Luffy if he hadn't been busy explaining to Ussop some of the finer points on how a mast made for a good weapon.

Mario instead turned to walk up a flight of stairs that lead to a higher part of the ship's deck where Zoro and Nami were. When he saw Zoro soundly asleep, leaning against the ship's handrail and snoring loudly, Mario figured that he probably wouldn't like being woken up right now, so he decided to hand the bracelet over to Nami.

"Wah."

"Hmm? What's this?" Nami said as she took the bracelet.

Looking over the object, she couldn't quite determine what it was. It's needle definitely resembled that of a compass' but without any of the cardinal directions marked anywhere on its surface it couldn't be one. The needle's red end pointed towards one direction consistently as she rotated the bracelet around in her hand.

"Where did you find this?"

Mario pointed to where the two whalers had been knocked out before.

"Those whalers must have dropped this when they left."

Nami juggled a few different thoughts around in her head for a moment before she chose one to act on.

"I'll hold onto this, right now I need to chart out our course."

"Hmm?"

"I'm the navigator on the Going Merry."

Mario had no idea what a "Going Merry" was, so he decided to make an educated guess as to what it could be. He went to speak before remembering no one he had met yet could understand him and instead pulled out his new chalkboard and sketched a picture of a merry-go-round with a question mark next to it and showed it to Nami.

Nami had no clue what Mario had just drawn a picture of, so she decided to just reiterate what she said.

"Going Merry is the name of our ship."

This conversation was quickly making Mario realize just how little he knew about this crew of people he joined only a few hours ago. With each question Nami answered, he could think of at least three more he hadn't even thought to ask anyone yet. Though to be fair, he was more of a "go with the flow" type of guy, so things like getting to know anything more than just someone's name didn't seem all that important to him. Though if he was going to be sailing with these people, he figured it would be best to get this sort of stuff out of the way now while everything was calm.

Mario pondered upon what the most basic and essential piece of information he should know about these people was before deciding that it would be what his crew _did_ exactly.

He erased his previous drawing to make room for one of the Going Merry and Luffy's head with an equals sign next to them that was followed by a large question mark.

Nami had to stare at the drawing for a couple of seconds to make sure she understood what Mario was asking her. The only conclusion she came to that made sense was a question that Mario must have already known the answer to. He couldn't possibly be so naive as to join a crew of people without asking what they did... right?

"...Please tell me you know we're pirates..."

Had… had he heard her right?

Mario instantly erased his last drawing and scribbled down a picture of Luffy with an eye patch, peg leg, hook hand and parrot on his shoulder with the rest of the crew standing around him, looking more like mean spirited caricatures of themselves rather than how they actually looked. He stood there pointing at it, trying to confirm he had properly understood what Nami just told him.

Nami however, didn't appreciate the artistic license Mario had taken with his depiction of her specifically and expressed her distaste of the piece very clearly.

POW!

"I DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT!"

Mario ignored the large goosebump on his head that Nami just gave him by way of her fist and pressed on for an answer, now jabbing his index finger at the drawing in frantic manner.

It took Nami some time for her to compose herself enough to figure out what Mario was trying to tell her but when she finally understood the purpose of his drawing, she couldn't believe it.

"Did you seriously join our crew without knowing we were pirates?"

Mario blinked at her in an uncharacteristically shocked way before he looked up at their ship's reattached mast and saw its jolly roger for the first time. The jolly roger was pretty basic, it featured the regular skull and cross bones motif with the only deviation being the skull was fitted with the same straw hat that Luffy wore.

If Mario could've talked in any sort of coherent way, he probably would have started repeating the phrase "I'm a pirate." to himself, not unlike the same way a broken record would skip and replay the same part of a song indefinitely. It wouldn't have been as bad as it was, if not for the fact that Mario had already joined them, he was a pirate now and there was nothing he could do to change that. Feeling more confused then he had in years, Mario descended from their ship slowly down to the shore.

When he started putting some distance between himself and the ship, he could hear Nami talking to Luffy about something but he was too distracted to hear a word of what they were saying.

Mario Continued to trudge along until he came to the edge of the cape where he sat down. He cast a glance out to the ocean and saw Laboon was facing towards the coast, making it so he could see what Luffy spent the better part of the afternoon painting on his face. It turned out to be rather sloppy recreation of the Going Merry's jolly roger.

Pirates did like to leave their mark wherever they went, so he supposed it made sense.

Pirates...

Mario remained at the cape's edge alone for some time in silent thought.

After a while, he could hear someone's footsteps coming towards him before they stopped a few yards back. The sounds of someone sitting down at a table with something that sounded like ruffling paper followed shortly after. He assumed it was Nami sitting down to plan their ship's route like she had told him before.

"AAAAAAAHHH!"

Or not.

Mario might have been distressed over the sudden revelation of his new crewmates being pirates but he wasn't about to let anyone fall into harms way because he was distracted.

Mario quickly climbed to his feet and turned around to see who screamed as he got ready to fight, only to see Nami looking down at the table she was sitting at with a horrified expression on her face. Mario looked all around Nami, trying to see if there was any sort of threat nearby when Luffy, Ussop and Sanji all came running to her aid from the direction of the Going Merry.

"Oi, Nami! What's wrong?" Luffy said.

"We heard you screaming from the ship, what is it?" Ussop said.

"Nami-swan there's no need to fear! Your meal of love is here!" Sanji said while balancing several large dishes of cooked fish on his head and arms.

When they all approached the table Nami was seated at, she looked up at them in a panicked stupor.

"Our compass is broken! Look, it wont point in any one direction!"

"Oh, she's right." Sanji said.

"It just keeps spinning." Ussop said.

"Hee! looks like fun!" Luffy said.

Mario had already lost all interest in this situation as soon as he realized that there was no imminent danger to anyone and started to return to a more calm state of mind. As he did so, he saw Crocus slowly approaching the table from the lighthouse on this side of the coast shortly after Nami showed everyone the compass.

"You people came here without knowing the very basics of how to sail on the Grand Line? What brazen stupidity. You all must really wish to throw your lives away. I've already told you, this ocean is unlike any other in the world. You can't use a regular compass on the Grand Line."

"But that would mean that the magnetic fields here aren't normal." Nami said.

"They aren't. The islands of the Grand Line..."

Mario had been listening in on the their conversation but was now totally lost in the new subject they were discussing. The gist of what Crocus said was something along the lines of, "All the islands in the Grand Line have their own magnetic field that require the use of a special compass called a log pose to find your way from one to the next." or something to that effect.

Truth be told though, Mario wasn't really paying too much attention to what was being said as he started to make his way back to the Going Merry.

He had never encountered a situation like this before. On the one hand, these people were pirates. They probably plundered villages, stole from innocent people and had horrible dental hygiene. On the other hand, Mario had been around these people long enough to know that they weren't all that bad. If nothing else, Mario had certainly met worse pirates in his day. The memory of his fight with the skeletal pirate Cortez sprang to the front of his mind as he started to board the Going Merry.

Mario could hear everyone still talking back at the table in the distance as he looked around the Going Merry's vacant deck. It was a nice ship, a buncha' cabins, a lot of outdoor room, a tiny forest on top of the ship's cabins… What?

Rubbing his hands over his eyes for a few seconds to make sure the light wasn't playing a trick on him, Mario looked back to where he had before and still saw a small orchard of trees growing on top of the cabin's roofs. He made a relatively small jump up to the grove to get a better look at it. Once he was there he saw that there was a patch of grass at his feet and surrounding him were some orange- no, tangerine trees.

If nothing else, this at least meant he could scratch off the bad hygiene bit from his list of concerns about these people.

He gently sat down on the grass to collect himself so he could make a decision on what he was going to do, when he heard someone snoring loudly nearby.

It was then Mario saw Zoro was also in the miniature orchard with him, sound asleep. He must have moved at some point because he was leaning against one of the tangerine trees now. He couldn't blame him, it didn't feel like a ship up here inside of the trees. He probably would have fallen asleep too had he not needed to find an answer for the question of what he was going to do.

...Actually… What _was_ he going to do?

If he left Luffy and the others now, he would be stuck here on the Red Line with no way to get anywhere else, he'd be unable to do anything more then sit around, stare out at the ocean and wonder what happened to his brother and the princess.

That and he had already accepted Luffy's invitation to join his crew anyway. Luffy was his captain now and pirate or not, as long as he didn't do anything bad he couldn't be, well, bad right?

Yeah. That made sense!

Mario had debated with himself enough now to know what he was going to do. He was going to march right back down off this ship, say he was sorry for ever doubting these people- no, his new crew and proudly sail with them under the same mast, jolly roger or no jolly rog- Why was the Red Line so far out in the water?

As Mario prepared to go back down to the shore and apologize, he saw that the Going Merry was now pretty far away from the Red Line and was quickly moving even further away from it with each passing second.

Did they leave the ship floating by mistake?

Did Laboon's flailing around from earlier knock the anchor loose?

Did this ship even have an anchor?

All these questions and more ran through Mario's mind as he wracked his brain to figure out what had happened, when he remembered he wasn't alone. He walked over to the still sleeping Zoro's side and gently started to shake him.

"Hello? Hellooo? Hellooooo-ooooo?"

As Zoro started to rise from his sleep, he saw his new crew mate, who only stood just as tall as him when he was sitting down, at his side repeating the word hello. This wasn't exactly what the swordsman would have liked to be woken up by but to be fair, if given a choice in the matter he wouldn't have wanted to be woken up at all.

"What is it?" Zoro said in a half annoyed, half groggy state.

Mario motioned out to where Reverse Mountain was in the distance.

It took Zoro a second to find what Mario was pointing at through his still fatigued eyes but when they finally readjusted to the orange light that was being thrown by the sun, he saw a small land mass floating out in the distance.

"Why are you showing me an island?"

Mario shook his head and pulled out his chalkboard. He drew a picture of the Going Merry with his and Zoro's head floating above it and a mountain far away from the ship with Luffy's head next to it and an anchor with an X over it in-between the two.

Zoro remained still as he stared at the drawing and slowly started to piece together the information Mario had given him. The second he realized what Mario was trying to tell him, Zoro was on his feet, scanning the ship's deck for any of his other crew mates but he found none anywhere.

"What the hell happened!?"

Mario shrugged.

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT BULL-CRAP! Why are we in the middle of the ocean!?"

Mario quickly erased his last drawing to start in on the next one, this time Mario drew however, it took him longer than usual. This was because when he flipped the chalkboard around so Zoro could see it, he saw that Mario had made a set of nine different sectioned off images which depicted everything that had happened today, from the start of Luffy and Laboon's confrontation, to him waking up Zoro moments before. What wasn't shown in any of the pictures, was the reason he and Mario were floating out to sea separated from everyone else.

"This still doesn't explain what we're doing out in the ocean!"

Mario nodded.

"So, you really don't know what happened..." As Zoro said this, he started to narrow his eyes.

"Mario, if what you're saying is true... then we're not the only people on this ship." Zoro then became deathly silent, as he tried to catch any sounds that weren't natural.

"...upid…ubber...Immort..." Zoro and Mario both looked down at their feet, now barely able make out a foreign voice beneath them inside one of the ship's cabins.

Zoro immediately jumped down from the roof of the cabin to find out who was on their ship while Mario followed closely behind him.

After making sure that the cabin with the ship's helm was the one where the voice was coming from, Zoro kicked its door hard enough to make it fly open and then stood back away from the entrance to the room, allowing himself some space to draw one of his blades from it's sheath so he would be ready to cut down the intruder if the need to arose.

When he saw who the intruder was though, Zoro had to stare at them for a second, as he could honestly say he wasn't expecting to see them again any time soon.

Because Mario was at Zoro's side, he too could clearly see their mysterious ship-napper. The more Mario looked at him, the more he felt like he had met the man somewhere before but he couldn't quite place his finger on where he would've.

His outfit was normal enough, he wore some gray dress shoes and a light gray blazer with pants of a matching color, both parts of the outfit had maroon trimming and the pants had a single maroon strip down the outside and inside of their legs. He had a purple shirt on underneath his blazer with its collar sticking straight up into the air as well as a yellow medallion that resembled a strong breeze on his chest and a pair of pale yellow earrings that were short rods which ended in small balls. What caught Mario's eyes most though were his hands and head.

His hands by themselves were actually quite normal but what wasn't normal about them were the three inch long, needle sharp nails at the ends of both his thumbs and all his fingers. His head was distinct for two reasons, reason one being the fact that his eyes were so tightly squinted that it was virtually impossible for one to see his eyeballs to any degree. Reason two was his tall, twisted, purple, absolutely ridiculous looking candy cane style haircut.

Mario would've laughed at the sight of the man if the situation hadn't of been so serious. He instead quickly adopted a firm resolution and he immediately began to put it in action.

"Hello!"

"NOT THE RIGHT TIME!"

"Why are you here, cretin? I thought I made sure this ship was empty. And you… You're the one who slammed into me before! Fool, do you have any idea of who you've messed with!?"

Mario blinked at him a few times before the memory he had been searching for suddenly came to him. Mario pulled out his chalkboard and drew a picture of the man laying face down on the Going Merry's deck with himself sitting on top of him from when he first landed on the ship.

"Wah?" Mario said as he pointed back and forth between the man and his drawing.

Zoro couldn't fully fight off the urge to smile that was pulling at the corners of his mouth after witnessing the man's reaction to Mario's drawing of him.

The man however, who looked like he was about to have a vein burst on his forehead, did not take this situation nearly as well as Zoro did. Actually, it was taking all of his inner strength to not just cut the short man down where he stood right then and there but he managed to suppress his murderous urges for the time being. He wanted to ensure his demise happened slowly so he could fully enjoy it after all.

"Since I already have what I want, I'm afraid that there's no need for either of you to be here any more. So I'm going to have to escort you both off of this ship now. Limb by limb. **"** The purple haired man said this in a surprisingly smooth voice as he lifted one of his hands over his chest while holding its index and middle fingers out, his nails glinted in the small amount of light that entered into the cabin.

Zoro's slightly amused smile was replaced with a far more devious smirk as he took the green piece of cloth that was wrapped around his arm off and tied it around his head like a bandana.

"Funny you say that, because I was just thinking the same thing."

Zoro unsheathed all three of his katana, holding one in each hand while placing the third one's hilt in-between his teeth.

"I needed an excuse to give Yubashiri and Sandai Kitetsu a test run anyway."

Ignoring Zoro's odd choice to put a sword in his mouth, Mario saw that there was going to be no way out of this situation without conflict. He submitted to this fact and readied himself for the impending fight.

He had gotten a bit rusty when it came to his hand-to-hand combat skills, so he hoped they would come back to him quickly.

.

.

.

.

.

Hey all, TTI here.

Sorry this chapter took as long as it did to come out but it has the first major deviation from One Piece's original storyline so I wanted to make sure I was totally satisfied with it before I released it.

I didn't just finish a new chapter though, I went back and cleaned up the first two with some grammatical fixes and improvements to the story's flow.

So other than that I'm hoping to start releasing a new chapter every one to two weeks from now on. That'll give me enough time to make sure each chapter is just how I want it, while also coming out at a relatively fast pace.

Finally, I'd like to send a thank you to The Sin of Justice for your review of my work so far and tips for my writing I've gone ahead and implemented, always appreciated.

Stay tuned and all that. =]


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV: Exploring a new land!/Separated at sea!

As Mario and Zoro stared at him, the purple haired ship-napper split his attention perfectly between the duo of unexpected complications before him. He was watching them closely as to foresee which one of them would first attempt to strike, thus ensuring that neither one of them would be able get a surprise hit in on him.

Zoro was trying to find any moment of weakness in the man's defense so he could knock him to the ground and turn the Going Merry around as soon as he could. Having now heard the consequences of foolhardy sailing on the Grand Line firsthand, he knew that if their ship drifted too far out to sea without Nami, neither he nor Mario would have any chance of being able to find their way back to Reverse Mountain so they could regroup with the rest of their crew.

Mario, unlike Zoro and the purple haired man, was acting quite inappropriately when compared to how seriously the others were treating this situation.

"Wha-tah! Heyah! Mmm, haa!"

He was squeaking out several different battle cries in rapid succession of each other, while also rather poorly mimicking kung fu style poses. He was trying to intimidate the candy cane haired man into surrendering without a fight.

Sadly, his little performance was doing anything but.

The man interpreted what Mario was doing as some kind of taunt and he would have no more of it.

"You are the one who stopped me from accomplishing my mission, little man. For standing in my way of obtaining revenge against the Straw hat, you will now experience the powers of the Kama Kama Fruit!" After he finished speaking, the purple haired man dropped down into a crouched combat stance.

"KAMA KAMA NO, KAMAITACHI!"

In the blink of an eye, Mario was pulled out of the doorway he had still been posing in to the Going Merry's deck by Zoro, just as an unseen force sliced through part of the cabin's walls right by where he'd been before.

"Wah?"

"Idiot! Don't just stand still when you're in a fight!" Zoro said as he continued to carry Mario out to the most open area of their ship's deck he could reach.

The purple haired man dashed out from the cabin after Mario and Zoro while preparing another attack.

"Fools! You're trapped here on this ship with me! I will not let you escape!"

Once Zoro let him free from his grasp, Mario stood up and tried to figure out what had cut through that wall back there. He didn't have to think about what it could have been long though, because the purple haired man did something to answer his question in a less than preferable way.

"KAMA KAMA NO, KAMAITACHI!"

The purple haired man yelled out the same phrase from before as he flicked his left arm out in a wide horizontal arch aimed at where Mario and Zoro were standing. It was this action which allowed him make a clearly defined "line" of air which leaped off his finger tips and then flew towards Mario and Zoro at a very high speed. Zoro dodged the breeze by running off to one side of it and Mario jumped above it.

While in the air Mario looked over at where the gust of wind was headed and saw that when it made contact with some of the Going Merry's guardrail, that particular segment of it was torn from the ship and promptly cut in half. Those sliced parts then splashed down into the water as the cutting breeze dissipated after traveling through the air over the ocean for a moment longer, leaving Mario with a vague idea of what he was up against.

When Mario landed back down on the deck, he looked over at the candy cane haired man as he started to speak.

"Impressed? This is the power of the Kama Kama Devil Fruit, little man. The wind itself is my weapon, I can make it as sharp as any blade and use it to cut down all who oppose me. Now you will fully understand your grave mistake of crossing, Eric, the Whirlwind!"

Whatever Mario had been thinking about before was replaced with a brand new set of questions the instant Eric finished speaking.

Since when did eating any kind of fruit grant you the ability to create chopping winds?

Why did Eric start talking in gibberish when he waved his arm?

How come Eric's gibberish sounded so much like Luffy's?

What was a Devil Fruit?

Again though, Mario had next to no time to contemplate the answers to any of his questions before something interrupted his thoughts.

"Mario. Get to the helm and turn the ship around. I'll take care of him." Zoro said as he tightened his grip on all three of his katana hilts.

Mario nodded to Zoro and started to sprint back to the cabin with the helm.

"KAMA KAMA NO, chi-chi-chi, KAMAITACHI!"

After waving his left hand's fingers in front of his mouth while blowing on them, Eric turned to face Mario and flicked his arm out in an identical way to how he had before, which created another cutting breeze that almost caught Mario as he ran across the deck. Fortunately Mario had seen the attack early enough to jump back away from the cabin's entrance, making it so the wind smashed into the deck leaving a gaping hole in the shape of itself at his feet instead of on the side of his body.

Zoro took advantage of Eric's back facing towards him by going in for a dual bladed slash against it but Eric turned around in time to catch the blades of Zoro's swords in-between his unusually well kept finger nails.

"Cretin... you're still trying to stand in my way?" Eric said as he struggled to hold Zoro's swords back.

"Yeah, I've gotta' go back and pick up my idiot captain." Zoro said as he tried to overpower Eric.

Mario saw that he now had a chance to fix their course while Zoro distracted Eric and wasted no time in diving into the helm holding cabin.

When he was inside the room, Mario glanced around for a moment as he tried to locate what he needed and noticed many things. The first of which was that this place looked a lot more like a kitchen than a room that would normally hold a ship's helm.

The walls of the room were wooden as one would have expected, omitting a small patch of bricks that were surrounding a stove off to Mario's left side which was a part of a small counter top. A little past the counter was a porthole and off in the far left corner of the room was a tall white refrigerator that stood next to a completely filled wine rack. Sitting slightly off from the center of the room in front of him was a plain wooden table surrounded by chairs which had a cylindrical lamp hanging down from the ceiling above it. Over in the far right corner of the room there were several sacks, barrels and crates that were more than likely filled with spare rations for the crew.

Last but not least, when he finished his sweep of the room by looking to his right side, Mario found a pole jutting up from the floor that was almost as tall as he was, topped off with a miniature version of the ship's figurehead ram.

"Ah ha!"

Mario ran over to the pole and looked down at the floor around it. There was a slight cross shaped indentation in the floor at the helm's base which cut even deeper into the ship on the cross's horizontal line. It was clear that one would steer the ship by pushing the helm off to one side of the gap or the other.

Mario was just about to use the helm before he remembered that hadn't made sure to double check the direction he should turn the ship to in order to get back to Reverse Mountain.

He went to turn around and exit the room, when a gust of air suddenly burst in through a newly created hole in one of the cabin's walls and nearly chopped his legs off. Thankfully Mario's instincts kicked in again and saved him by making him jump.

Letting out a sigh of relief after landing, Mario made his way outside of the cabin and saw that Zoro was preoccupied with the task of successfully dodging every gust of wind Eric was flinging at him from the front of the ship. Because of how fast Eric was practically flailing his arms about, which had the side effect of creating many deep slash marks across much of the Going Merry's deck and nearby cabin's walls, Zoro couldn't find an opening to launch towards him for a counterattack.

To put it simply, they were locked in a stalemate that needed to end soon before Eric cut the Going Merry into a million little pieces.

Mario tore his attention away from the dueling combatants for now and started to look around, searching for the highest area of the ship he could get to. When he spotted the perfect place, he jumped up to the Going Merry's crow's nest and started to scan the sea for the Red Line.

It was up there in the crow's nest that, on top of not finding what he was searching for Mario spotted something that was far more urgent to his and Zoro's current whereabouts.

"WHOA!"

Zoro stopped running around for a moment to find out where that sudden yell came from. It was only when he saw Mario standing still up in the crow's nest looking out at the sea with his mouth wide open in shock that he knew it had been him.

"What are you doing up there?! Turn the ship aro-"

The swordsman found he couldn't even bring himself to finish scolding Mario for not doing what he was supposed to be doing before he turned his own gaze over to where Mario's was and instantly let his own jaw drop.

Despite still wanting them both either dead, off of his new ship or both, Eric stopped attacking momentarily as well. He was finding himself quite irritated by the way these people totally disregarded his presence at the drop of a hat in favor of standing with their mouths dangling open.

"OI! What are you two imbeciles doing!? Pay attention when I'm trying to kill you!"

He wouldn't have admit it but Eric found his curiosity so piqued by whatever it was that had grabbed both of his enemies attention the way it did, that he too was soon turning around himself to catch a glimpse of it.

When Eric did his jaw dropped as well.

A short while had passed since the Going Merry's unscheduled departure from the Red Line that day, as the sun had finally just disappeared over the horizon and now made way for a much darker sky to hang above the ship. However even though it was rapidly becoming much grayer out now, the three men could all clearly see that the ship they were on was currently sailing straight into a dark, imposing, massive storm cloud which had completely blotted out the sky.

"WHEN DID THAT GET THERE!?" Zoro and Eric said in an unintentional unison.

Before he let panic fully set in, Zoro regained enough composure to instantly break into mad dash for the helm so he could turn the ship away from the storm. Unfortunately for Zoro and company, fate had already decided that none of them were getting away from this predicament that easily.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE HELM!?"

If he had been calm enough to more closely examine the helm, Zoro would have seen that it had been cleanly cut from its base this time it had been broken instead of roughly snapped as it had been before. Turns out Mario jumping over the breeze that nearly claimed his legs did little to stop it from continuing on its path and destroying their ship's only means of navigation, which of course meant that sailing away from the storm directly in front of them was quite impossible now.

Despite not really expecting an answer anyway, neither Mario or Eric even had a chance to answer Zoro's question, as only a moment later the Going Merry sailed straight into the storm cloud and instantly began fighting to stay afloat against some incredibly powerful waves.

"AAAAAAAHH!"

The three men loudly screamed together as the ocean, seemingly on purpose, threatened to sink their ship.

KA-KRACK! KISSSHHH!

Mario had been thrown into many an unpleasant situation in his life but being stuck on a ship flailing around at the mercy of the ocean during a large scale thunderstorm was one he could say he had avoided until now. The rain that pelted his body and the thunder which roared in his ears left him in more unnerved a state than he would have cared to admit. He found that the storm was forcing him to stay totally still high up in the crows nest, which felt oh-so tiny to him right now.

Much like Mario, Zoro was locked in place as he looked on at the raging storm which was threatening to force their ship down into the ocean's deepest depths as well, when he was snapped back to reality after realizing that more than likely nobody else here possessed any knowledge on how to sail; meaning that he was the only person present who could adequately protect the ship from capsizing.

He'd be damned if Merry sunk under his watch.

"Mario! Help me furl the sails!"

"Wah!" Eager to help get Himself and Zoro out of this storm any way he could and also eager to give his mind something to do other then worry, Mario jumped over to him as fast as he could.

Although he didn't know much about sailing ships, Mario was a fast learner. He and Zoro managed to tie up both the Going Merry's main sail and the red and white stripped sail on the ship's rear mast in pretty good time, when all of the sudden a wave that must have been at least ten times the size of the Going Merry rose up from ocean and came crashing down towards it.

SPLASH!

The swordsman and to a much lesser extent mustached man's lives almost started flashing before their eyes, when the wave suddenly exploded into a shape that was vaguely similar to an X.

Droplets of the wave's water flew harmlessly through the air alongside the rain that had been pouring down on them since the men entered the storm cloud, when it occurred to the pirate pair that their ship was still afloat somehow.

Mario blinked a few times for good measure to confirm that the ship was really still sailing.

It was… How?

He looked over the deck to see if maybe a cannon had fired by itself through some stroke of good luck, when he spotted Eric, both of his arms outstretched at his sides with his back facing towards him and Zoro.

"KAMA KAMA NO... TSUMUJIKAZE."

Ah, Eric was a good guy.

Wanting to thank him for potentially saving his and Zoro's lives, Mario bounced down next to Eric, completely abandoning his sail furling escapades for congratulatory back-patting instead.

"Thank-you-so-much!"

"Fool. I'm not doing this to help you, this is exclusively for my own well-being."

Another huge wave sprang up from the ocean and started coming down on the Going Merry just as Eric finished speaking. Mario started frantically gesturing towards it which made Eric turn to face it.

"KAMA KAMA NO, TSUMUJIKAZE!"

Eric slashed both of his arms downwards at overlapping angles far out in front of his chest, thus making a large X shaped breeze which flew towards and then destroyed the wave in an excessively explosive way. When the watery threat was gone, Eric slowly turned to face Mario again.

"I'm merely using you for my protection. As soon as we get out of this storm, I'm killing you both and taking this ship for my own, little man." Eric said with an eerily calm demeanor as his ever-squinted eyes burrowed into Mario.

"You got it!" Mario gave Eric a large thumbs up and smile alongside his reply.

"Are you not taking me seriously!?"

While Mario and Eric were busy talking yet another huge wave popped up from out of nowhere and soon after was about to come down on the ship. That was when Zoro used his three swords to slice the wave into a great many small chunks at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed, leaving the segmented wave with little left to do other than splash back down into the ocean in an entirely ineffective manner.

Zoro stood up and turned to face Eric after he broke from his crouched pose he'd struck after delivering the attack.

"Team up with you or drown huh? I refuse to die to a little bit of water, so I guess I'll let you live until our ship is safe."

"Tsk. Your insolence knows no bounds, cretin." Eric said as he lifted one of his arms up over his chest.

This was the beginning of a nice, healthy relationship in Mario's eyes, that he openly embraced both figuratively and literally.

"Hahaha!"

Mario wrapped an arm around both of the men's waists, bringing them in for a big bear hug or as best of a bear hug as a man of his stature could manage.

"NOW'S NOT THE TIME FOR THAT YOU IDIOT!"

KLOK!

Because this recently formed companionship was still all new to them and would more than likely take some time for them to get truly used to, Mario forgave how Zoro and Eric just kicked him in the back of his head across the deck and got up to help fight off the waves that were still trying to conquer their small ship without pause.

"Regardless of what your little nakama here says, know that our alignment is indeed a temporary one at best." Eric said.

"If you thought this was anything more than that, then you'd have been disappointed when this was over, push-nails." Zoro said.

"WHY YOU-!"

Unrelenting in its assault, the surging sea gave rise to wave number four which was quick to encroach upon the ship. The only problem with this, other than the fact that a large wave was heading right for their ship, was neither of the bickering men seemed to be aware enough of their surroundings to notice this wave, leaving it a window of opportunity to come down upon them.

Well, it would've been free to do just that if not for Mario's presence.

Mario ran right between the two men, inadvertently grabbing both of their attention by doing so, before he leaped straight ahead at the wave whilst creating a fireball. When he deemed himself to be close enough to the wave, he let the fire fly towards its target, which resulted in a rather bright explosion that ended up blowing half of the wave every which way while the other half evaporated into thin air.

Zoro and Eric looked on at where the stout man had landed after his little pyrotechnic show had concluded as he turned to face them.

"Let's-a do this!" Mario said with his already high level of enthusiasm boosted even higher than usual thanks to how perfectly he'd tamed that turbulent tide.

Zoro smirked at Mario.

"Right, we've got bigger fish to fry right now."

Eric simply scowled at Zoro.

Now that all of them had gotten their own moment of glory and Zoro and Eric had stopped arguing for the time being, everyone could now focus on the task at hand.

Eric using his wind controlling powers to blow the waves away, Zoro using his katana to cut the waves into tiny chunks and Mario using his fireballs to blow the waves up, were collectively just enough to stop the ocean from claiming their ship.

As one would expect though, "just enough" was not the ideal way to accomplish this task.

What must have at least been three excruciatingly long hours of unlikely teamwork went by before the ocean finally calmed down. When it did, all the clouds vanished and made way for the sky to become filled with distant stars while the sea changed into an absolutely stunning state thanks to the moon's reflected light highlighting even the slightest ripples against its surface.

None of the men cared about the now calm and beautiful night though, they were just happy to be alive… and also extremely tired.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

One by one, Mario, Zoro and Eric fell down onto the Going Merry's deck within close proximity of one another as they all violently gasped for air, totally exhausted from fighting against the ocean itself for three hours straight.

It truly was remarkable, despite every logical sign pointing to their ship sinking and the highly improbable notion of only three people being able to protect a modestly sized ship from sinking in a storm of that caliber, somehow they had done it. The Going Merry was still up and kicking.

Nobody even said so much as a word of jubilation at the prospect of being alive though, as a deep sleep brought on by the overexertion of their bodies overtook each of the men before they had a chance to indulge in such a pleasure.

…

Mario felt achy. Very, very achy.

"...Oh...mama mia..."

Before he was going to do anything else today, he had to allow himself a moment of some much needed stretching out to alleviate some of his body's residual soreness.

"Err, mmm…"

Crack.

"Haaaaa."

That, felt good.

Now that Mario was properly awake and no longer suffering from a dull pain in his side, he started to look around to see what had happened during his much needed nap.

Thinking it best to first check how Zoro and Eric fared through the night, Mario looked over his shoulder and found that they were both sprawled out and snoring with the tops of their heads across from one another on the Going Merry's now heavily damaged deck.

Since the ship was in no immediate danger and they clearly needed some more rest yet, for which he couldn't fault them, Mario decided to let them each wake up on their own time instead of him needlessly waking them up early. Now that he knew they were fine, Mario started to take in the Going Merry's new surroundings.

The sun was shining down from almost the exact center of the sky above, implying that the time was probably around the start of the afternoon. The sea was still calm, its water moving only just enough that the Going Merry floated with its gentle swaying motions wherever they carried it. It was a perfect mid-summers day temperature wise as well. Sadly, Mario couldn't enjoy this beautiful day just yet, because he had a problem on his hands.

The Red Line wasn't visible in any direction.

In fact, the only land that he could even see was an island far out in front of the ship's bow.

The course of events that lead up to this predicament he found himself in was surely another testament to his horrible string of bad luck he'd been going through.

...Still, somewhere was better than nowhere.

Mario figured it was simply common sense that in his captain's absence he should help his fellow crew mate and guest out by taking them to the nearest island he could find for a little recuperation. If nothing else, docking at an island would be better than just letting the Going Merry aimlessly drift through the vastness of the sea.

With his plan decided he jumped up on both of the masts and unfurled their respective sails, which had both made it through the storm in perfect condition and then went to go use the helm. When he walked into the cabin that held it, he was greeted by a pole laying next to a stump of wood sticking up from where the helm should have been.

Well that was a problem.

"Hmm… Ah!"

It was one with a simple enough solution though. Fix it again.

Mario ran out of the room and returned to it within a minute with a hammer and some nails in hand. Not long after that, he'd finished the job and he had not only patched the helm to be useable again but his execution of the task was done in such a thoroughly impeccable way that one would have had quite a difficult time in differentiating the mended helm from a brand new one.

After thanking himself for being able to remember and utilize his long neglected carpentry skills, he started to steer the Going Merry over to the island at a well controlled pace. Something noteworthy about this was that Mario found it surprisingly natural to push the helm around to make the ship move, even though he had absolutely no prior experience with sailing.

A few minutes later, he had made it close enough to the previously indistinguishable blob of an island to start making out some of its features.

First thing he noticed about it was that it was extremely overgrown, like a garden someone had forgotten to weed for a whole year.

The trees were many and covered in vines, making a thick line about fifty feet up from the ground they grew from, blocking all chances of peering further ahead onto the island. The foliage that covered the ground mostly consisted of large green leafy plants, with an occasional red, purple or yellow one breaking the natural color composition. Located further inward, just peaking over the island's dense tree line, were about a dozen volcanoes all in varying states of activeness. Taller than even those were the two large white mountains that towered over everything else on the island which sat directly across from one another.

The most disheartening thing Mario noticed however, was that the island was not giving off the impression of a civilization of any kind living there.

Nevertheless, he continued to steer the Going Merry to the island. Maybe he would find a small village of some hospitable natives that would give him directions on how to get back to the Red Line.

As the ship came up to the island's side, Mario managed to spot a small canal that cut into it, which in turn lead into the island's all-encompassing, untamed jungle. Also at this close proximity, the sounds of the natural wildlife on the island could now be heard and to be blunt, none of it sounded friendly.

Craaaaawww!

Grrrrr…

Scra. Scra. Scra.

Still staying behind the helm, Mario steered the ship along the narrow waterway he had chosen to take deep into the jungle, decidedly unaffected by the very hostile sounds which now surrounded the Going Merry. He knew that this was better than trying to find his way back to the Red Line without any sort of available navigation.

Sailing along for a few more minutes, Mario finally found a spot by the inland coast that he deemed safe enough to anchor the Going Merry at, though his evaluation solely consisted of making sure the ship could actually fit there but he meant well by it all the same.

Now that he had the ship right where he wanted it, all that was left for him to do was weigh it down.

It took him a little bit of searching but Mario did manage to find the Going Merry's anchor, which was still intact along with the heavy link-chain that connected it to the ship… on the deck.

Cracking his knuckles and mustering his strength, Mario scarcely succeeded in heaving the anchor over the ship's guardrail, which made a very satisfying splashing sound when it connected with the river's water. The Going Merry wasn't going anywhere now.

"Whew."

Turning his gaze away from the river, Mario looked back at the both of the still soundly sleeping men on the damaged deck again, who despite all of the ambient cries coming from the island's various forms of wildlife, were still producing most of the loudest sounds within earshot. Clearly they still needed some time to rest, which was no problem for him.

Mario hopped down from the Going Merry to the coast and started off into the jungle by himself.

He figured he could search a large chunk of the island, see if there was any help to be found here and make it back to the ship all before Zoro and Eric woke up. Worst case scenario, no one lived here and the trip would result in him returning to the Going Merry empty-handed. Not that big of a deal in his head.

As Mario started walking into the jungle and the ship vanished in the trees behind him, he began to sing his favorite ditty to himself to pass some time.

"Do-do do do-do do, do."

The deeper he walked into the jungle, the more he thought it was kind of odd that despite all the weird sounds coming from all over the island, he had yet to encounter a single thing that lived here. In his personal experience with traveling to new places, you typically get attacked by lots of things within seconds of arriving at them.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

A loud booming noise which sounded like oversized feet stomping the ground nearby tore Mario away from his thoughts as he turned his head over to where the sound was coming from.

"Hmm?"

Perhaps a single second of silence went by after Mario "hmm'd" to himself, when out from some of the nearby trees came a large lizard-like animal that stood tall on its hind legs, dwarfing the already small Mario by about seven times. It had a pair of small arms raised in front of its chest and brown, leathery skin. Its large head's mouth was opened up widely enough that drool freely dripped out of it between the gaps in its jagged teeth at a steady pace. All the while its completely yellow eyes lingered on Mario's body.

Mario could have reacted in several different ways to this situation that would have made perfect sense.

He could have yelled out in fear at seeing a monster that looked as menacing as this one did.

He could have instantly started running to get to a safe distance away from the creature.

He even could have attempted to fight off the beast by throwing some fire at it.

Rather then do any of those things though, he instead inwardly asked himself a question.

Since when were dinosaurs _this_ tall?

Of course, the tyrannosaurus rex didn't give him an answer to his query, it instead let out a roar.

"RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

After the beast did this inches away from his face, Mario very slowly and methodically turned his back to the dinosaur and then took off running for his life.

"WHA HAHAHAHA!"

Trees and plants became green and brown blurs in Mario's peripheral vision as he dashed off in a random direction in an attempt to escape from his new-found carnivorous chaser. Unfortunately for him, this particular tyrannosaurus hadn't managed to catch a meal yet today and was more than willing to hunt Mario down for as long as it needed to in order to enjoy a nice lunch.

Mario jumped over and skidded around anything that was in his way as he continued to run as fast as his legs would let him. It was only after he jumped between some trees which had been blocking his escape route, which led him out into a large circular clearing home to the base of one of the island's volcanoes, that he finally came to a stop.

Mario's head being immediately forced down as he grasped both of his knees while trying to catch his breath had made him miss an opportunity to see that there were also many sets of eyes in this clearing, all of which were now locked onto where he had just come running out from.

Those very same sets of eyes happened to belong to a rather high number of many different species of dinosaurs which inhabited this particular section of the island.

Some of the dinosaurs had sets of three horns on their heads, others had many spikes growing on their tails and backs, others still were much shorter than the rest with sets of sharp teeth and talons along with spotted heads.

Every one of the dinosaurs had a single thing in common though.

They were all looking intently at the short man who had just caught his breath and started looking around, now noticing he had a crowd of things surrounding him that probably wanted to eat him.

"RRAAAAAHHH!"

As well as a t-rex rapidly closing in on him from behind.

...Well, this trip had gone very wrong, very fast.

Mario almost began to wonder just how bad it could actually feel to be digested when he spotted the most welcomed familiar thing, which was subsequently the second familiar thing he had seen so far since he'd jumped into that halo on what currently stood with him as the worst rescue mission he'd ever gone on, he could have ever asked for.

The object in question, was a veritable question block.

It was simply a bright yellow cube with a stylized white question mark taking up a majority of all of it's sides faces, excluding the top and bottom ones, accompanied by a rivet in each of the sides corners. Because it was in some way associated with Mario, it naturally had its own physics defying trait, the question block's ability was that it somehow simply floated in place about ten feet up from the surface of the island without any sort of visible aid.

Mario eyed the cube with a new intensity present in his gaze as the ground beneath him shook from the tyrannosaurus quickly closing in on him from behind. As he did this, because dinosaurs are not very patient creatures, all of the ones still surrounding Mario decided to charge the stout man with a "first come, first serve" type of attitude.

Mario's facial expression was somewhere between determined and happy as he dropped down into a pose similar to one a runner in a footrace would strike as they eagerly waited for the starters pistol to fire.

RRRAAAAAAAHHH!

"Let's-a-go!"

WOOSH!

Using his small size and uncanny ability to gain speed to his advantage, Mario slid between legs, ran up tails and hopped from one dinosaur's back to the next in an incredible show of acrobatics, despite how his physique would deter most from thinking him capable of such maneuvers.

As Mario attempted to close the distance between himself and the question block, the tyrannosaurus had finally flung itself out from the jungle and started charging straight through any of the other dinosaurs which were standing between him and his lunch.

"RRAAAAAHHH!"

The tyrannosaurus' jaw chomped down dangerously close to Mario's body as he flew through the air past all of the wicked sets of teeth that were trying to tear off any part of him they could. Yet the near impossibility of simply surviving this encounter was blown away when Mario successfully landed across the field past of all his prehistoric prosecutors totally unscathed.

He didn't stop for even a second though, because right after his legs connected with the ground, Mario launched himself head first towards the underside of the yellow question block.

BA-WOWOWOWO!

The sound the block emitted when Mario's head smacked into its bottom was virtually indescribable but what was, was what happened after it ended.

The block's entire surface area was instantly changed from its previous look of bright yellow with white question marks and rivets, into a very soft, solid, smooth brown color. In perfect unison with this color changing, a rather large… mushroom like thing, with a yellow cap, four red polka dots and what could only be described as a pair of beady black eyes on its thick, small, light-tan stalk materialized on top of the block.

Seeing this odd thing apparently made Mario quite happy.

"Just what I needed!"

After landing back on the ground, Mario immediately launched himself back up into the air high above the brown block. Then as he fell back down towards the island, Mario reached out with one of his hands to the mushroom shaped thing, which disappeared as quickly as it had appeared after his hand merely grazed a part of its cap's surface.

CHOMP!

Sadly, Mario had completely neglected to take care in not falling directly into the tyrannosaurus' reach. The large lizard snapped Mario's whole body off the top of the hovering cube and into his mouth as soon as he landed on it.

The tyrannosaurus was about to start chewing its meal but it was distracted from doing so by an odd melody that was coming from the inside of its head.

WOMP! WOMP! WO-WO-WOMP!

Before the tyrannosaurus had a chance to react to the tune, its jaw was quickly forced to open as widely as it could, allowing its meal to free himself from its mouth. The dinosaur looked down at its escaped prey and saw that it suddenly had a drastic change in its size.

Mario had somehow grown roughly five times his normal body size, effectively making him a miniature giant.

"OH YEAH!" Mario said in his now extremely low pitched voice.

Ironically, despite being much bigger now, Mario was still not even a third as tall as most of the larger dinosaurs in the clearing making the current flexing of his arms seem silly when accounting for all the creatures present.

Although he was now much more akin to a full course meal instead of the nice bite-sized snack all of the dinosaurs had wanted before, they all began to charge Mario's position anyway. Specifically the tyrannosaurus tried to clamp down on Mario's shoulder as soon as it had collected itself enough to realize that it'd been gypped out of a meal.

"WAH!"

With the music that just seemed to be emitting from his body having looped back around to the start of its melody, Mario dodged the bite and ran around to the backside of the tyrannosaurus in a blur of motion. Mario then grabbed onto the dinosaur's tail with both of his hands and planted his feet firmly on the ground.

All the other dinosaurs in the clearing were rapidly closing the space between them and Mario, all eager to get a bite out of the buffet of a man before them.

"LET'S-A-GO!"

Tightening his grip on the tyrannosaurus' tail, Mario started to spin around in place.

Woosh. Woosh. Woosh.

"RAAAHH!?"

If a dinosaur could sound confused, the one Mario was beginning to spin around certainly did.

Momentum was quickly being built by Mario as he continually spun around in place, gradually shifting his speed from a light spinning to a rapid twirling, causing his once formidable foe to become little more than a large living reptilian wrecking ball in his glove clad hands.

He had practically become a miniature tornado.

WOOSH! WOOSH! WOOSH!

Save for maybe one or two of the smaller ones, none of the dinosaurs did so much as bat an eyelash at this development however and all of them still ran straight towards Mario, eager to be the first to feast on him; not that they had much further to go now anyway.

"HEYAH!"

Mario, still spinning around at an incredible speed, started to move towards the group of dinosaurs that were closest to him. Understandably this resulted in him sending all of the dinosaurs in that group flying through the air into the ground, jungle and sky high above the island, which knocked each and every one of them out after they slammed into whatever they did when they landed.

Any of the dinosaurs that were far enough away from Mario to potentially dodge the attack couldn't turn away from the cretaceous-creature-seeking cyclone in time and were smacked away by the man regardless of their efforts.

It didn't take too much longer for Mario to knock out all of the remaining dinosaurs in the clearing in a similar fashion and then let go of the tyrannosaurus he had used to accomplish this feat just as he stopped spinning, which sent it hurdling straight into the side of one of the island's many volcanoes.

CRASH!

Chwa-chwa-chwa.

As soon as Mario let go of the dinosaur's tail, he shrunk back down to his original size and the music that had accompanied his larger form also vanished alongside it. He then fell down onto his back in the middle of the grassy clearing after the fight had come to end, satisfied with how well it turned out.

BLAST!

No rest for a hero.

Mario sat up and looked over to where the tyrannosaurus had smashed into the volcano and saw that a deep crack had formed from about a third of the way up the volcano's side to the very top of its rim.

More importantly than that though was that the impact from the dinosaur had caused the volcano to erupt.

Lava gushed out from the volcano's top, splatters of the molten rock flew through the air and excess amounts of it trickled down the volcano's side. All the while, the noise the eruption was creating could be heard clear as a bell all across the island.

Mario had to cover his ears just to dampen the sound a little bit.

As he stood there with his hands clamped down over his ears, Mario could feel the ground shaking once again as it had when the tyrannosaurus was running after him through the jungle; although this time, whatever the thing attached to the vibration was, it felt a lot bigger then the dinosaur had.

Mario only just started trying to find the perpetrator behind the ground shaking stomping, when out from either side of the clearing, tearing trees up roots and all and blasting boulders away into tiny bits as they headed along on a collision course for one another, came two **gigantic** men.

"DORRY!"

"BROGY!"

"WHOA!"

Mario nearly tripped over his own feet as he dashed as quickly as he could to the part of the jungle that was closest to him.

CCCLLLLLAAAAAAAAAASSSSSHHH!

Being blown off your feet from two people simply running into each other should really say something about how strong those people in question are.

This exact situation happened to Mario just now as he tumbled across the grassy field from the shock wave the pair of giants had made when their house-sized weapons clashed into one another.

Lying on his stomach, Mario peeked up at the giants and could now clearly see what they looked like.

One had a long brown beard that reached down to his lower stomach. He wore a deep blue cape which draped down the entire back of his body and an ornate copper helmet which went down the length of his nose and wrapped around his eyes. Covering his abdomen was a leather garment of some sort with metal plates that was held in place by a belt going over his right shoulder. Around his waist was another leather belt that held a white ring of soft fur in place. His pants were light brown and were tucked into his dark brown boots which had more of the same white fur that was around his waist at their tops and around their ankles.

The other chubbier giant had a dirty blonde beard which was shaped in such a way that it looked like a cut-away of a bowl. He too had a cape and helmet on, though his cape was teal instead of blue and his helmet looked more plain and much more like a vikings helmet than his opponents did. He had a large piece of red cloth going over his whole stomach that had both of its ends covered in white fur and a pair of suspender like straps holding it in place. Over that was a leather belt which went diagonally from his right shoulder down to his waist's left side. Around his waist was another belt holding longer strands of white hair than the other giant's in place. His pants were vertically stripped black and orange and they ended with more white fur. His feet were covered by a pair of plain, rounded, brown work boots.

The pair of titans continued to trade blows with each other in the center of the clearing as Mario looked up at the brawling men from a safe distance.

…

He was completely sick and tired of this place. In fact, he could pretty much say he hated it here.

He didn't care for a single thing he had experienced since he was sucked into that stupid halo-thing a day ago now and was more than ready to return to his castle and order some of his soldiers to bring him the finest gourmet meal they could prepare for him while he relaxed in his comfy leather throne for a while but he couldn't do that.

He didn't even have a clue as to why he had been brought here in the first place. That absolutely _stupid_ portal machine had suddenly turned on and pulled him through it without even so much as someone activating it.

This event had very much so reminded him that if there was one thing that he didn't like, it was not being in total control of everything that happened to him.

"I hate it here! I hate it here! I hate it here! I HATE IT HERE!"

He held his right arm's fist out in front of himself before he continued speaking.

"THOSE STUPID GIANTS won't stop fighting with each other for five minutes so I can get some rest!"

He stuck one of his clawed fingers out.

"I haven't been able to find any help on this GOOMBA FORSAKEN ISLAND!"

He stuck another finger out.

"I've been FORCED to make MY OWN MEALS for a whole day now!"

Then another one with that being said.

"But worst of all..."

His arm slowly drifted back to his side.

"IT'S. ALL. MARIO'S. FAULT!"He said as his frustration reached its boiling point.

"If that twerp would just leave me alone, I would have become the wrongful ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom years ago- BUT NoOoOoO!"

He tried his best to replicate Mario's voice before he continued ranting to himself.

"Look at-a me! I'm-a Mario! I've got-a nothing better to-a do then stop Bowser whenever he kidnaps Princess Peach! She baked me-a cake one time so I'm-a gonna' protect her forever now! YAHOoOoOo!"

Bowser clenched both of his fists as he carried on along the side of a small canal he had found during his morning stroll to find out what the kind of meal he would be treated to today, passing by a ship as he did so.

"I swear, if I ever see that miserable excuse for a plumber again I'm gonna'-"

Bowser suddenly froze in his tracks and widened his eyes slightly as he started to walk backwards for a few short steps before looking at the canal again, which helped him fully realize that there was a ship floating in the water right off the shoreline.

"A- A- A SHIP!"

Bowser excitedly leaped up onto the ship's deck, roughly rocking the whole boat when he landed.

"Oh yeah! who's back? Bowser's back!"

Bowser started pumping each of his fists in the air in a spontaneous and premature celebration at the prospect of leaving this island and returning home.

"Alright men, man the deck! Full speed ahead! Set a course for my castle!"

Of course, nothing happened after he finished speaking.

"Let me repeat myself…-FULL. SPEED. AHEAD!"

Bowser wasn't thinking straight evidently.

"WHY AREN'T YOU IDIOTS DOING WHAT I- Oh, right..."

When he turned around, Bowser was rudely torn from his fantasy of having been reunited with his army and was forced to face his current predicament once again, to which he released a heavy sigh.

"If you want something done right..."

He started walking to go and use his new ship's wheel, when he remembered that he had absolutely no clue how to sail a ship. His men had always taken care of this sort of thing for him.

"CRUD! FOILED AGAIN!"

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?"

When Bowser turned around to see who just said that, he found it was some weirdo with green hair pointing a sword at him.

...HIM!

Did this guy have any idea who he was messing with?!

"Listen up bub-I don't know who you think you are but I'm the new head-honcho around here! This ship is mine now and you're gonna' sail it for me! Got it?"

"I'm afraid you're mistaken. This is my ship."

Another voice came from somewhere nearby as a guy with a dumb purple haircut, oddly well kept fingernails and squinted eyes stood up away from both him and the swordsman.

"You've eaten a Zoan class Devil Fruit, yes? The Kame Kame Fruit perhaps? You're certainly not any regular kind of animal at least. Not that it matters I suppose, since both of you are getting off of my ship right now anyways." Said the dumb-haircut guy as he lifted one of his arms over his chest.

"Don't think I've forgotten about you, bastard! Merry is safe now, so I'm going to finish you off. And turtle, you're not making me do anything." Said the swordsman as he pulled two more swords from his side and put one of them in his mouth… Okay…

"Grr… You two losers are gonna' regret not joining me when you had the chance! Looks like I'll have to give you both a crash course in respect- BOWSER STYLE!" After Bowser said this, he opened both of his hands widely to optimize their claws scratching capabilities as he flicked his eyes between his two opponents.

This was going to be fun.

.

.

.

.

.

Hey all, TTI here.

Sorry for this chapter coming out later than I intended it to but here it is at last.

This chapter took awhile specifically because it has next to nothing to do with One Piece's actual storyline at this point and I wanted to make sure it felt as close to it as it could before I released it.

While I was away, you guys got me up to thirteen reviews, favorites and follows! Thank you all so much for your continued support of this story, it really means a ton to me.

Also, I went ahead and made a simple title card for this story, so hopefully it stands out a little bit more from the crowd of other stories on this site now.

In response to Eternal4Ever's question, this Mario uses the one from the Super Smash Bros. Brawl game as its base in terms of fighting capabilities and draws its character mostly from the main series Mario games with some Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi and Super Mario RPG elements thrown in.

In response to jakeroo123, that was just a poorly worded sentence on my part that I've gone ahead ahead and changed into something more fitting.

Stay tuned and all that. =]


	5. Chapter 5

**ATTENTION!**

 **IF YOU'RE SOMEONE WHO HAS ALREADY READ THE FIRST FOUR CHAPTERS, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU GO BACK AND RE-READ THEM BEFORE READING CHAPTER FIVE.**

 **THE STORY HAS RECEIVED A MASSIVE MAKEOVER AND IS NOT ONLY WORTH RE-READING BUT IS ALSO SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT AND CONTAINS SOME PLOT CHANGES WHICH YOU WON'T KNOW ABOUT OTHERWISE.**

 **THIS MESSAGE WILL BE REMOVED WHEN CHAPTER SIX COMES OUT.**

 **THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!**

Chapter V: Meet the giants, Brogy and Dorry!/A three-way duel!

Not that Mario was someone who would ever gloat about it, which he was completely fine with because everything he did was out of his own goodwill and not for bragging rights of any kind but nevertheless, he was certainly a man who had seen quite a lot of things in his day which were impressive to say the least.

He had defeated a previously unknown space monster called Tatanga and rescued the entire country of Sarasaland and its Princess Daisy, from eternal enslavement at his hands.

He and his brother saved both the Beanbean and Mushroom Kingdoms from falling into the clutches of an exceedingly powerful witch and her very poorly outspoken henchman.

He had even defeated a dimension leaping blacksmith who tried to take over his dimension by destroying the wish granting Star Road and building an army of living weapons to fight on his behalf.

Still, despite everything he had accomplished in his adventure filled life, Mario could honestly say that the giants before him were a sight to behold.

Other than the obvious spectacle one received simply through the viewing of things this large locked together in combat, it was clear that both men were driven by an almost unrivaled passion and determination to win their duel, which Mario figured must have been a big part of the reason they fought with each other like this. Mario of course still had next to no clue as to what the actual reason they fought could have been but he guessed it might have stemmed from some sort of deeply routed rivalry.

CLANK! CRUNCH! CRACK!

Mario lied on his stomach for a short while longer and watched as both of the giants still stood tall in the center of the clearing, neither willing to give into the others unrelenting gauntlet of blows and fall to the ground in defeat.

Each of the men continued to try their best to beat their opponent and claim victory over the battle, perfectly matching each other blow for blow in doing so, when they both delivered a powerful punch to each others head using their bucklers at almost the exact same moment, causing each of them to start falling to the ground.

As they fell, the blue caped giant released his grip on his chipped broadsword and buckler while the teal caped giant let go of his own buckler and well worn battle ax.

KAA-CRASH!

Each of the giants were now spread out across the ground with craters underneath their bodies as they both entered into fits of very jagged breathing while the sun reflected off of their discarded weapons.

Now was his chance! Mario could escape right now without either of these giants ever knowing he had been there watching them in the first place and warn Zoro and Eric about what lived on this island!

...They were covered in bruises though…and they could be seriously injured after fighting like that…

Mario released a heavy sigh as he decided to check up on the giants and make sure they were alright before he left.

As he started walking over to them, the one with the teal colored cape began to speak after he managed to steady his breathing.

"73,465 battles."

"73,465 draws."

After the blue caped giant spoke, a smile suddenly broke out on each of the giants faces.

"Gegyagyagyagyagyagyagyagya!"

"Gebababababababababababababa!"

The blue and teal giants' respective and rather unique sounding laughter rang out through the clearing which now looked as if it had served as the battleground of a small scale war.

"100 Years and counting Dorry! There's quite a history to our fight now, huh? Gebababababa!" Said the teal giant.

"Speak for yourself Brogy! I can't even remember what started our feud in the first place! Gegyagyagyagya!" Said the blue giant.

Dorry and Brogy.

Mario noted the names of the giants as he finished walking up to the them. When he deemed himself close enough to be heard, Mario yelled out his practically trademarked greeting, not for it's beauty or uniqueness as a phrase but rather for the way it always came out.

"Hello!"

The giants still held smiles on each of their faces as they both sat up to see who had just called out that greeting to them. When they looked down at the ground nearby, they saw a particularly small human wearing blue overalls and a red hat flashing a wide grin their way while waving his right arm back and forth.

"...Hmm?"

Mario found that the giants were staring at him, waiting to see what he was going to do now that he had their attention. Unfortunately, Mario hadn't thought that far ahead into how this encounter would play out and simply stared back at them.

The two parties continued to stare at each other for a moment while an awkward silence hung in the air around them, which was only broken when both of the giants started laughing again.

"GEBABABABABA!"

"GEGYAGYAGYAGYA!"

...Laughter _is_ the best medicine after all, so why not?

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

For essentially no reason at all, Mario joined the two giants in a spontaneous fit of laughter which rang out across the whole island for all of its inhabitants to hear.

As he laughed, Mario figured that if they felt good enough to do this, he could safely assume the giants weren't seriously injured and more than likely were not interested in fighting him. Good thing too, he doubted he could even do something as simple as momentarily phase either of them.

…

Tense was the perfect word to describe the atmosphere on the Going Merry at this particular moment in time.

Zoro, Eric and Bowser all had yet to move so much as a single inch from where they each stood on the Going Merry's deck and attack either of their newfound opponents. Each of them had their reasons for wanting to keep the ship for themselves and none of them were about to compromise with their enemies under any circumstances.

Bowser, who was quickly becoming tired of just standing around with people he was less than fond of got ready to make a quick slash against the green haired guy's torso but just as he was about to throw his arm out at him, one of the weirdest sounds he ever heard in his life reached his ears.

GEBAGEGHAHYABEBA!

"What wa-"

"KAMA KAMA NO, KAMAITACHI!"

Before Bowser could finish asking his question, the purple haircut guy did something with his arm that sent the turtle careening off the ship into one of the nearby jungle's many trees.

CRASH!

Yeah, that settled it. Bowser was gonna' beat these guys to a pulp.

"Nobody- and I mean **NOBODY,** throws BOWSER around! ESPECIALLY not some weirdo with a PURPLE, HOOK-SHAPED HAIRCUT!"

After Bowser got up, he started to take a deep breath.

As he breathed in enough air that his chest puffed out a bit, a fireball which bared a striking resemblance to one of Mario's began forming inside of his mouth.

While Bowser let the fireball grow in size Zoro and Eric entered into an intense power struggle of swords versus nails on the Going Merry.

Now Zoro was an excellent swordsman, that much was fact to those who knew him but even he couldn't claim to possess the ability to stop wind itself, let alone slicing wind which was as sharp as a cut from a blade. Knowing this, Zoro guessed his best bet in this fight was to get up close to Eric and not give him any opportunities to use his power in the first place.

"Just give up cretin, you'll never make it back to the Red Line. You're as good as dead to your crew."

"You wanna' bet on that, okama-man?" Zoro said with a smirk.

"You insolent-!"

"EAT THIS YOU CHUMPS!"

Right after Bowser shouted over Eric, who himself was becoming exhausted from how many times he had been cut off before he was allowed to exact his revenge on someone, he made his fireball shoot out of his mouth at a high speed and aimed it straight for where Zoro and Eric were standing on the Going Merry's deck. Both men saw the fire flying at them and dodged it by jumping off of the ship to safety on the grass nearby.

The Fire flew past where it would have hit them had they remained where they'd been and continued on its course until it came into contact with some of the nearby foliage, which resulted in something comparable to a firework going off inside of a straw hut. Nothing more than Zoro and Eric regaining their footing had a chance to happen before a sound was heard by all present.

RRRAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Amongst some other smaller creatures that ran away from the freshly made fire, there was a group of very large, deep green dinosaurs with remarkably long necks. They were lead by another one of their kind who stood much higher then the rest of the pack and had scars running along its face. It was clear that none of them could appreciate Bowser's handiwork as they all started to charge towards the two men and turtle in a fit of rage.

"DINOSAUR STAMPEDE!"

All three of them suddenly found themselves running side-by-side through the dense jungle as the group of huge dinosaurs chased after them.

"Why are dinosaurs on this island!?"

"Fool! How do you know nothing about this place!?"

"I hate it here so much!"

RRRAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Horrible sounds like that were what kept Zoro, Eric and Bowser on the move as they only had a small lead on the dinosaurs, which meant that if they stopped running for even a second they would surely become dino-chow.

This very thought crossed all three of their minds within mere seconds of each other.

"KAMA KAMA NO-"

"ONI GIRI!"

While Zoro's tri-sword counterattack didn't manage to reach Eric, it did force Eric to cut his own attack short so he could avoid that powerful slash, which seemed to be the closest the swordsman had come to actually hitting him.

"GRAAAGH!"

Bowser quickly came up from behind and tried to slash at Zoro and Eric's backs. Both men avoided his attack however, which he responded to by taking a deep breath and shooting out some more fireballs at Eric.

"KAMA KAMA NO, UZU!"

Before Bowser's fireballs could make contact with him, Eric stuck his right arm out and started to twirl it around in a circular motion. This made a small tornado shaped cutting breeze appear past the end of his arm, which promptly knocked all of the fireballs off their course to the direction of Zoro instead. Zoro lifted his swords up in time and knocked the fireballs away from himself as well.

"What kind of turtle breaths fire!?"

"Who're you calling a turtle, CORAL CAP!"

Just as Zoro got ready to cut Bowser's head off, Those same fireballs proceeded to light more of the jungle on fire and further antagonize the already angry dinosaurs.

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

Bowser had been trailing behind the two men ahead of him up until now as he tried his best to keep his running speed up to par with their own but found he couldn't quite match it. Turned out that the final push he needed was just to hear the even more enraged cries of the dinosaurs directly behind him to not only equal but also surpass their running speeds.

"Eat them, not me!"

"COWARD!" Eric and Zoro said.

They all continued to take swipes at each other as they ran, be it Zoro using his swords, Eric throwing cutting winds or Bowser with both his Fireballs and claws. None ever landed an attack on either of the others though.

Eric was preparing another one of his single arm slashes when he suddenly got an idea. He slowed down slightly until he was behind the others.

KAMA KAMA NO-

Zoro and Bowser were focused on each other, locked in a claws and swords stalemate but as soon as they heard those words they knew what Eric was getting ready to do and immediately backed away from the area he was aiming towards.

KAMAITACHI!

Eric's attack flew right past them into the jungle.

Zoro would have been inclined to think Eric was tiring from running and fighting because of how poorly he aimed that attack, had it not been for what happened next.

Snap. Snap. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

"I bid you farewell, nuisances!"

When his cutting breeze flew into the jungle it had hit the trunks of several trees which caused them to collapse right on the pathway all of them had been using to escape the dinosaurs up to that point. After they fell, they created a tall wooden wall which Eric jumped and flipped over, allowing him to escape while also ensuring neither Bowser nor Zoro would be able to follow him.

"HEY! Get back here and fight like a man!"

Bowser was about to try and scale the blockage to give chase, when he saw Zoro at the edge of his vision make a hard left once he'd come up to the wall.

"And where are you g-!?"

Bowser was suddenly reminded why they were running in the first place and took off after him when the scarred dinosaur had nearly chomped him up from the ground.

They both kept running together as the giant herd of dinosaurs continued their relentless chase. A silent truce was made as neither Zoro or Bowser tried to attack the other, they needed every bit of energy they had in order to stay ahead of them.

Soon afterwards they had ran out into a clearing that sat at the base of a huge white mountain which was littered with holes, it stretched far higher upwards than anything else they had seen on the island. Neither cared to admire it though, as they both ran up to it as fast as they could to try and reach one of it's holes so they could hide.

That plan never saw fruition though because the dinosaurs came charging out from the jungle just as they reached the side of it.

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

"Oh, COME ON! Just leave me alone already!"

"It's no use… They'll just keep chasing us."

Bowser glanced over at Zoro and saw him, like he himself was, panting slightly. Despite this, he had a very stern look on his face which Bowser had yet to see him carry as he took a piece of green cloth off his arm and tied it around his head like a bandana.

"The way I see it, there's only two ways out of this."

Bowser wasn't very keen on hearing what this guy was going to say but got ready to listen anyways since he couldn't think of a way out of this situation.

"Yeah? What would those two ways be?"

Zoro calmed his breathing as he finished tying his bandana.

"The first is the one where we get chewed apart by some meat-eating giraffes."

The dinosaurs were over half of the way through the clearing at this point, they looked just as angry now as they had earlier, if not more so. Bowser decided to keep playing along.

"What's the other way?"

"The other way..." Zoro stood tall with all three of his swords, one held in his mouth and one in each hand, as he stared forward at the oncoming horde.

"...Is the one where we kick their assess."

There was a certain moxie about Zoro which Bowser couldn't help but smirk at. If he hadn't of gotten in his way back at the ship, Bowser might have let this guy been his ship's cabin boy.

"I can get behind that logic. I just have one question for you first."

Zoro's cold stare when he looked over at Bowser was one which had undoubtedly driven shivers up and down the spines of many a foe before. It might have even scared the dinosaurs off had he been looking at them instead of Bowser.

"What is it?"

"What are 'assess'?"

"WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT!?"

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Time was up for their conversation as the dinosaurs had but only yards to cover now before they would be in reach of them. The man and turtle got ready as they watched the herd come barreling towards them. The tallest dinosaur lead the charge with its head high in the air, prepared to bring it down on them as soon as it was close enough to do so.

SLASH!

Without any kind of warning, just as Bowser and Zoro got ready to fight for their lives, the scarred dinosaur's neck was cleanly cut from it's body where it became little more than a victim of gravity as it fell to the ground with a-.

THUD!

The beast's body stood for only seconds before it lost its balance and crashed to the ground as well.

THUUUD!

While the amount dirt that the lifeless pieces of the dinosaur slamming into the ground managed to stir up was quite a lot, it would have taken at least five times that same amount to cover up what had just done this.

This was because Zoro and Bowser's savior was a huge battle ax held in the hand of an arm which came from around the side of the mountain.

It remained outstretched in the air for some time, simply lingering where it had finished off the beast. As it stayed there unmoving, the owner of it seemingly pleased with what it had done, the rest of the dinosaurs were quick to flee from the thing which had killed the strongest of their kind.

Unsure of what they should do, Bowser and Zoro stayed still and continued to remain still even as a figure wearing a teal cape which was nearly twice as tall as the dinosaurs stepped out from around the mountain's side.

"GEBABABABABABABA! You guys are lucky I saw you running from them, you could've ended up being the long-necks lunch! Though you two must be brave to have stood your ground to them. Having guests like you after going so long without any is a real treat!"

It was pretty clear that the giant hadn't realized just how much he'd surprised Bowser and Zoro based on how he was talking to them so casually. Though neither of them had reached the level of being completely stunned by him, they were both more than taken aback from seeing him appear so suddenly. When he finished speaking it took Zoro several seconds before he found he could respond to him, which he did very cautiously.

"I'm sorry… Who are you?"

A Prideful smile appeared on the giant's face.

"I AM BROGY! THE MIGHTIEST-"

…

"-WARRIOR IN ALL OF ELBAF! GEGYAGYAGYAGYAGYAGYA!"

Eric, being a mercenary for hire, had heard tell of many different pirates he'd considered going after so he could collect on their bounties.

There was Buggy the Clown, a minor pirate who could never be harmed by a cut.

There was Don Krieg, the man who wore golden armor and lead a fleet of 50 ships and 5,000 men.

Eric had even considered going after Arlong, the human-hating Fishman who had plans to conquer the entire ocean of East Blue before he recently vanished.

Likewise, Eric had also heard the legends of giants before, tales of men who scrapped the sky when they stood upright and could only live inside hollowed out mountains. Naturally, he thought they sounded ridiculous because that was all they were, stories to entertain foolish people.

Which is why a while ago when he had been sifting through some wanted posters and saw two old tattered ones, proclaiming a bounty of 100,000,000 beri for the capture of some giants, he thought nothing of them.

Now he was forced to reconsider their legitimacy, because before him right now was one of those giants. Dorry.

"Now tell me human, who are you?" Dorry stared at Eric as he waited for him to respond.

Eric still couldn't believe he'd gotten himself into this kind of situation. He decided that before he was going to speak, he was going to take a moment and reflect on what lead up to this encounter.

…

"I bid you farewell, nuisances!"

"HEY! Get back here and fig..."

Eric's plan worked like a charm, he had not only separated himself from those rampaging dinosaurs but had also given them some live bait to chase after while he made a getaway. The idiom of killing two birds with one stone came to his mind as he kept running through the jungle for a short while longer. When he was sure he'd put enough distance between himself and the dinosaurs, he came to a stop and let himself have a moment to catch his breath.

"Heh. Heh. Perhaps those two will have learned not to get in my way after this, assuming they don't get trampled or eaten before we meet again that is." Eric said with a scoff.

Now standing alone in the dense jungle, surrounded by a place unfit for man or beast, Eric had to find his way back to the ship as discreetly as he could. He thought that was simple enough, all he had to do was retrace his steps.

"Let's see, I turned left back at the ship then slightly right, ran for about 100 yards… or was it 125? No, I turned right twice... or once? Now that I think about it… that was a right and not a left… right?"

Caw! Caw!

Looking up at the sky Eric saw a large green prehistoric bird flying circles high above him. The sight was far too similar to how a vulture would go about catching it's prey and caused the slightest tinge of distress to go through Eric.

"Disgusting creature..."

A hand went to adjust Eric's glasses, which only ended up serving as a reminder of how they had been destroyed the day before when said hand found nothing to latch onto. Just like that, his tinge of distress was washed over with a feeling of anger.

"That Straw Hat, he has no idea what he's done."

Eric balled his fists and stood still as the memory of what Luffy did to him played in his mind. An anger which had been building in Eric for two full days now had reached its boiling point and needed to somehow be satiated.

Caw! Caw! CAW! C-

The bird was in the process of diving down towards Eric when the man realized that the perfect stress reliever had been placed right before him.

"KAMA KAMA NO, TSUMUJIKAZE!"

One hit was all it took. The bird was sent flying through several trees which left it battered and bruised.

"KAMA KAMA NO, KAMAITACHI! KAMAITACHI! KAMAITACHI!"

Eric wasn't finished though, he sent three more powerful slashes at the jungle surrounding the bird, making it so that just as it got up to try and attack him several trees collapsed on it instead, killing it instantly.

Satisfied, Eric stood there facing where the flying fiend's body lay, panting in anger.

"This… this is what awaits those who oppose me." Eric leaned his head back after he spoke.

"THIS IS WHAT AWAITS YOU, STRAW HAT LUFFY!"

Eric's voice echoed through the air across a large chunk of the island, carrying his words to the ears of anything which was close enough to hear them.

stomp… stomp… stomp…

Hearing a certain sound again which had become all too familiar to him throughout the course of that day caused Eric to look over at where he guessed that noise was coming from.

"That's impossible… it can't be..."

"RRAAAAAAAHH!"

His fears were confirmed when he saw the exact same group of dinosaurs from before running towards him once more, though they now admittedly looked far less terrifying and much more terrified. Almost not believing what he was seeing, it took Eric a second to understand that he should start running again unless he wanted to be trampled himself.

"KAMA KAMA NO, KAMAITACHI!"

Flicking his arm out, Eric tried to create another barrier he could use to put something between himself and the dinosaurs, this time however the dinosaurs simply plowed straight through every tree Eric threw into their path. Not having enough time to build up something large enough to stop them meant his only option was to keep going further and further into the jungle. His mind went into overtime, rapidly trying to figure out some way to deal with these pests once and for all so he could escape this deadly time capsule of an island.

In fact, Eric was so busy trying to come up with ideas, that he had almost failed to notice the large brown thing obstructing the path ahead of him. He came skidding to a halt right before he smacked into it.

"Dammit, what… is..."

Eric was left in awe from what he saw, little did he know that he was about to be even more impressed.

SSSLLLAAAAAAASSSHHH!

TH-THUD! TH-THUD! THUD! TH-THUD! THUD!

Up to this point in time, there had been around 20 something long necked dinosaurs running amok across the island.

Now there were none.

All of them, killed in a single motion by a giant broad sword which belonged to the owner of the brown object in front of Eric.

…

"Hey, can you hear me down there?"

An unfamiliar voice brought Eric back to the present, where he had to look up at what was almost a 70 degree angle just to see the face those words came from. Ironically despite now being able to see more of him, the giant was no easier to look at.

Eric felt that some small part of his reality had been stripped away by merely knowing such a being existed. This man before him was a logical impossibility, a figment which shouldn't have been able to do a thing to the physical world and yet Eric now found himself surrounded by many decapitated dinosaur corpses all thanks to a swing from his sword.

This wasn't any sort of illusion, this was as real as it got.

"Hmm, what's that?"

Tearing himself out of his thoughts, Eric heard Dorry speak to some invisible force to his right. Nothing other than the faintest of scratching sounds could be heard in reply to his query.

"You know him? Really?"

From where Eric stood, it looked like Dorry was squinting intently at something on his right shoulder.

"A nakama huh? Well why didn't you say so!"

Seemingly pleased with whatever transpired, Dorry lifted his right hand up to the same shoulder he'd been speaking with and then slowly lowered it down to the ground. Eric remained as still as he could since he wasn't exactly sure how he would deal with an insane giant just yet.

Soon enough Dorry's hand had made it to ground level, where a familiar face greeted Eric.

"Eric!" Mario said with his chalkboard in one hand as he waved with his other.

On the chalkboard was a rendition of the moment after Eric had slashed the first wave that almost sunk the Going Merry, when Mario had jumped over to him and shook his hand. This version of the event saw Eric smiling back at Mario even as the storm raged on in the background.

Complete incertitude reigned in Eric's mind as he stared onward at what just might have been the most unwanted combination of things he could have been faced with right now.

Somehow in the time he and Zoro had been knocked out, Mario had not only discovered the existence of a pirate giant with a bounty of 100,000,000 beri but he had also befriended it to the point that it was giving him what was the equivalent of a piggyback ride.

Eric couldn't even begin to fathom how any of this had come to pass.

"Yoo-hoo!"

Mario called out to Eric again, which made him suddenly very aware that he needed to start to consider just what in the world he was going to do now.

"Hey! Since you brought me all this food, why don't you and your nakama join me for lunch? It's been a while since I've had company over!"

"Okay!" Mario said.

Eric's chance to say something came and went well before he even fully registered he had an opportunity to speak at all.

"Stop right th-!" Eric quickly cut himself off when he thought through just what he was about to do.

"Eh? Something wrong?" Dorry said, his form looming over Eric in an unintentionally imposing way, which help put the final nail in place to secure what Eric was thinking.

As much as he disliked how this had all unfolded and as much as he hated to admit it, it was probably going to be better to just play along with what was happening right now than try to fight it.

The way Eric looked at it if were he to go against Dorry, he would almost certainly be outmatched by him in a matter of seconds based on size alone. Beyond that, were he to try and just run off into the jungle there would be no telling what else would be waiting for him in the undergrowth, on top of that he would still have no means to find his way back to the ship even if he did manage to get away from him.

Now on the other hand, staying with Dorry for the time being meant at the very least he could use him for protection against the creatures of this island. Also his height would bring about the potential ability to relocate the ship out in the jungle.

He knew those reasons didn't mean much but they were better than nothing.

"No, nothing's wrong."

"Well then, hurry up and climb on!"

To say Eric was merely "cautious in his approach to Dorry's idle hand", would be such an incredible attempt to make him not seem like he was afraid at that moment that it would be almost commendable.

In truth, if Eric had been around anyone other than a man who'd become so swept up in gazing out across the dinosaur populated fields and forests whizzing past that he couldn't shoot a glance his way and a giant who had been lonely for so long that he didn't even bother to consider why Eric was so rigid for the whole ride to his house, he would've surely been questioned about several things.

Accompanying each step forward Dorry took to his increasingly obvious home was a very befitting feeling of size. A short stride ahead of the man whose palm served as a platform for Eric and Mario was one of the island's huge white hole filled mountains that made even Dorry tiny by comparison.

"Welcome to my home!" The echos of Dorry's words shook the earth around him slightly, sending a few scattered dinosaurs scurrying away.

Doing his best to ignore the vibrations at his feet and ringing in his ears, Eric found himself being rubbed the wrong way by the mountain now that he was up close to it. The more he studied its structure, cavities and color, the more he found himself wanting to ask something so absurd that, believing it would be taking in jest, he almost didn't provide a voice to.

"This mountain... wouldn't happen to be a skull, would it?"

Dorry's face lit up.

"A man with an eye for the spoils of battle I see! Yes, this is a skull from one of the Grand Lines largest catches, a mighty sea king!"

Overwhelmed, Eric's mind could only struggle to imagine what this creature would have looked like if it was still alive, which proved to be a fruitless task since he was still having a hard time grasping that this mountain had indeed been a living creature at some point.

Scratch. Scribble. Scritch.

Eric looked over towards the scratching sounds and saw Mario holding up a drawing of an enlarged piranha whose body was more mouth than anything else, caught on the end of fishing line fashioned out of an anchor's chain.

Dorry had now seen Mario's drawing too and was starting to open his mouth, which gave Eric his cue to cover his ears.

"GEGYAGYAGY-!"

…

"-ABABABABABA! Come on and dig in, you two act like you've never seen a hunk of meat before!"

Honestly if one wanted to dig deep into the specifics of Brogy's wording there, a solid argument could be made that neither Zoro or Bowser _had_ ever seen a hunk of meat quite like this before.

Namely because it was huge.

It was left to cool on a pile of hay in front of everyone as steam rolled off its freshly cooked exterior, where even on its side it rested a full foot over Bowser's head. A smell like that of a steak sizzling away on a well seasoned skillet assaulted Zoro's and Bowser's nostrils, thus provoking each of them to make a move for a piece of it despite any thoughts of this being some sort of trap.

A few careful cuts later and they were both chewing on their own portion of meat in silence, each of them in their own right thankful to have something to eat after the smell of it had triggered a reaction from their empty stomachs.

"Pretty good isn't it? There's plenty more where that came from so chow down 'till you can't anymore." Brogy said before taking another bite out of his own hunk of meat.

What followed was a span of unstable yet peaceful time punctuated by Zoro and Bowser shooting distrustful glances at one another while occasionally staring at Brogy as he munched on his grub.

This lasted until Zoro recalled just how he had gotten here in the first place.

"Oi, Brogy."

The giant was quick to respond, evidently pleased that his guest willingly spoke of his own accord.

"What is it?"

"Can you tell me what island this is?"

"Gebababababa! You're pretty far out in the Grand Line to not know where you are. What's your name?"

"Roronoa Zoro."

"And what about you turtle-man? Who're you?"

Bowser set his food aside and stood up tall.

"I'm the King of the Koopas- the dashing, devious and diligent BOWSER!" Bowser crossed his arms in as grandiose a way he could to ensure both men would understand just how awesome he was.

"Well Zoro-" Brogy said without even acknowledging him, leaving the turtle to grumble something to himself as he sat back down to eat his lunch.

"-this island is called 'Little Garden', its the second island on this route through the Grand Line."

That didn't sound good.

"Do you know how to get back to the Red Line from here?"

Brogy had to blink a few times before he assessed what he should say.

"Sorry to say but there's no way to go backwards on the Grand Line, you can only go ahead to the next island when your log pose sets on it. If your crew is behind us there's no way for you to meet up with them again until they make it here."

Zoro had to rub his right temple to stave off the beginnings of a headache.

"Are you sure there's no other way off this island?"

"Well, there is an eternal pose here that would lead you to my hometown of Elbaf but I'm fighting for the right to use it myself. You can't have it, unless you'd like to try and beat me to take it for yourself."

"Fighting to use it?"

A metaphorical light bulb flickered to life over Bowser's head as he swallowed a large bite of meat.

"IS THAT WHY YOU AND THAT OTHER GUY WON'T LET ME REST AT NIGHT!?"

Zoro looked over at Bowser who now had an arm straightened out towards Brogy with an accusing index finger pointing to the giant on its end. His faced was twisted into a vicious frown.

Brogy turned his head the slightest bit so that Bowser was right in the center of his gaze before speaking.

"Do you have a problem with Elbaf's way of judgment?" Brogy said, each word coming out in an unemotional way.

"YOU BET YOUR BEARD I DO! Ever since I crashed here, I have barely been able to hear my own thoughts over all of the senseless PUNCHING, KICKING, SLASHING and CRASHING you and that other dumb giant get up to every time that volcano erupts!"

Zoro didn't like the dead look that was now deeply rooted in Brogy's eyes as the giant stared at Bowser intensely. The swordsman subtly tried to signal Bowser to stop talking but little did he know the turtle's rant was just firing up.

"You've both nearly crushed me under your shoes, dropped your weapons on me, fallen on top of my head and almost hit me with one of the attacks from the ENDLESS stream you fling at each other ALL DAY LONG!"

It just might have been comical how over-the-top irate Bowser's speech was when compared to how apathetically Brogy was taking it, if it hadn't of been so clearly displeasing the giant on such a highly personal level.

"And now- after ALL OF THAT, I find out that this whole fight is going on because the two of you WON'T JUST GO HOME TOGETHER!? That has got to be, one of the dumbest things- I… Have. Ever! HEARD!"

Bowser unflinchingly held a furious glower to where Brogy rested, his breathing consisting only of short, sharp inhales and exhales. Other than the sounds of Bowser's panting, only the far off cries of some dinosaurs could be noticed in the now eerily quite clearing.

Zoro had not the faintest of an idea of what he should do in the aftermath of Bowser's tantrum, since Brogy wasn't giving any clue to what would be the appropriate reaction to have over what just happened. Really, Brogy wasn't doing much of anything as he sat so still that he could have been mistaken for an oversized sculpture.

"I see, if that's how you feel about it..." Brogy picked up his ax and hoisted it high above his head.

Without thinking, Zoro jumped off the log and roughly shoved Bowser as hard as he could.

CCCRRRRRAAAAAAASSSSSHHH!

The entire area surrounding where everyone had been seated was now moderately sunk down into a bowl shaped depression with a large gorge in the middle of it, left over from where the ax had fell.

Bowser clambered to his feet after exchanging a fleeting look of relief with Zoro, which was when he came to the sudden realization that insulting a giant who could easily kill massive dinosaurs with a snap of his arm just might not have been a very smart decision on his part.

"Hey, calm down there Grogy! I just meant that you could leave that other giant here and escape this place by yourself! Forget the fight!"

"QUIT TALKING!" Zoro's agape jaw made his face appear as if someone had smashed it with the backside of a shovel.

Brogy retrieved his ax from the earth with a resolute passion in his movement.

"ENOUGH!" He said before turning to look at Zoro.

"You have no right to interfere! Your nakama has to atone his actions, as do you too for interrupting me!" Brogy's statement left Zoro with sweat beads growing on his head.

"And you, you have made a mockery of my most precious treasure, my warrior pride! For this, there is a price you must pay!" Bowser wanted to hightail it out of there but between the threat Brogy had made and him wondering what a "nakama" was, he found he was locked in place.

Brogy stiffened his legs as he began raising his ax for another deadly blow, leaving the small man and turtle frozen for a few seconds as they watched the weapon reach the top of its possible height, clasped in the hands of the giant's fully extended arms well above his head. All seemed lost to the pair.

BLAST!

That was when Brogy turned away from them so he could see where that explosion sound came from.

After he'd done that, Zoro and Bowser took a gander over in the same direction he was looking towards and saw that peaking over the tops of the trees was one of the islands many volcanoes in mid-eruption. This specific one had a thick crack running up its side.

Brogy started cursing to himself under his breath.

"This isn't over, I'll be back for you two so don't try to run off."

The giant broke out of his prepared-to-strike stance and started to slowly make his way to the volcano, to which both Zoro and especially Bowser were grateful for.

Thud.

Bowser's shell's spikes poked into the dirt after he fell down on his back, both because he was so relieved he hadn't just been killed but also because he suddenly discovered that was completely out of breath.

"heh, heh, that guy, heh, is, heh, off his rocker, heh." Bowser said.

Zoro had so many well-warranted reactions laid out before him in his head that he initially found it difficult to land on any given one. However some speedy meditation made him recognize that there was really only one correct retort to Bowser's sentence.

"I SHOULD HAVE LET HIM KILL YOU!"

Bowser pushed himself up from the ground.

"What's your problem? _I'm_ the one who almost got cut in two!"

"Idiot! He's gonna' come after us both when he gets back!"

"That guy can do whatever he wants, I'll be long gone before he has a chance to see me again."

"Just where do you think you can run off to?" Zoro said as he crossed his arms.

"Anywhere I want! Just look… around..." Bowser's slow 360 degree turn brought about a stunning epiphany. He was technically still in the heart of a dinosaur infested jungle.

"Listen." Zoro spoke that one word like he was a high ranking officer commanding the attention of a recently recruited private.

Suffice it to say Bowser had his ears open.

"The only way I think either of us have a chance of making it out of here alive is if we make peace with Brogy."

Bowser threw his eyebrows down.

"You expect me to apologize to that lunatic!?"

CCCLLLLLAAAAAAAAAASSSSSHHH!

The instant words stopped coming out of Bowser's mouth a powerful shock wave rippled through the area, nearly knocking him and Zoro off of their feet while forcing them each to shield their faces as the worst of it passed by.

When they uncovered themselves, they could see Brogy far out in the jungle, locked in combat with another giant of a size equal to his own.

Zoro squinted his eyes slightly at Bowser.

"Point taken."

Bowser turned from the fight to face Zoro.

"Even if I DO try to go through with this, what's saying he won't still come after us?"

Zoro scratched the back of his head.

"There isn't any guarantee it'll work but we could try to give him something to prove that we're serious. Too bad there's nothing around to use as a gift."

quite fell over the swordsman and turtle for but a moment.

"AHA! I got it- follow me!" Bowser didn't wait for a response before he started to dash into the jungle.

"Wait a second! Where are you going?"

"Back to my ship! There's gotta' be something on it that Grogy would like!"

"YOU KNOW THE WAY!?"

"I didn't suffer on this rock for a whole day for nothing! NOW MOVE IT!"

Zoro slapped his palm against his forehead for a reason too many for him to care trying to list out before he started sprinting after Bowser.

As he ran, in the back of his head a small feeling cropped up, one which made him think that in all of this he'd been forgetting... something important. He didn't care to figure out what it meant right now though so he placed that train of thought on the back burner for the time being.

Once Zoro vanished into the forest, a nearby shrub's leaves flitted in an unnatural way as a small muffled giggle rang out from them. The noise slowly vanished as it went deep into the trees behind it.

…

"Gegyagyagyagyagyagya!"

"Hahahahahahahahahaha!"

Dorry slapped his knee while nearly choking on the food in his mouth as he and Mario took part in a bout of boisterous laughter.

"That's when I yanked its head out of the water to finish it off- but when I was getting ready to take a slash at it, it bit my shoulder! I yelled so loud I almost scared myself!"

He and Mario started up laughing again, the two happily strolling down memory lane lost in a totally different world from the one of the third man present.

Eric couldn't have cared less about what the giant was saying and despite being hungry he didn't even want to think about what kind of stains that meat would leave on his outfit if any of it's juice dripped on him, so he instead found himself feeding a morbid curiosity about what his examinations of the area had uncovered.

Going along with the giant's skull house motif quite well, there was a disturbingly tall pile of human skeletons right around the edge of one of the lower holes of the skull, perhaps serving as a warning to any would-be intruders.

This situation just seemed to keep getting worse and worse for Eric no matter how he tried to approach it in his mind. The prospect of fleeing into the jungle came up once more but he had to quell such thoughts for now. He had to keep his priorities straight.

"Dorry!"

It took a second for the giant to get his laughter under control, his smile plastered on his face the whole time he did.

"What is it, Eric?"

"I don't want to be a bother but Mario and I have lost our ship somewhere out in the jungle. May we ask for your assistance in relocating it?"

"For two little pipsqueaks like you guys I guess it really does feel like a jungle out there. It's easy for a guy like me to forget that sometimes! Gegyagyagyagya!"

Eric reminded himself to stay cool, he had to remember just who this was.

"Sorry. Yeah I can help you guys find your ship, climb on!"

Dorry dropped his hand to the ground which made Eric smirk.

As soon as he found the ship he would take his leave from the island and not look back. Even if he was on the Grand Line he would rather be out on the open sea than stay trapped here where a swift death waited for him around every bush.

"Thank you." Mario said, which made Eric tilt his head towards the short man.

As for Mario, well, when all was said and done it was his choice whether or not he wanted to get on the same ship as someone who'd threatened his life before. If Mario actually wanted to come with him, then when Dorry was gone it was fair game from there as far as he was concerned.

Blast!

The gap between Eric, Mario and Dorry's hand was almost closed when a tall volcano out in the jungle started to erupt, momentarily taking everyone's attention. The sight just made Eric all the happier that he was soon to awake from this nightm-.

"Sorry, you guys need to wait here for a minute." Dorry said as he recalled his hand and sword before starting to walk to the volcano.

Eric was on the verge of panicking. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"What are you doing!?"

"Ideally, ending a 100 year stalemate!"

Dorry walked with an unfaltering determination upholding each step he made towards the volcano, Eric getting to see evidence for this as he stared at the giant's back move further and further away from him.

"Good luck!" Mario said after he walked over to Eric's side.

Eric looked down at Mario.

"Th-"

CCCLLLLLAAAAAAAAAASSSSSHHH!

Mario and Eric each reflexively shielded their face from the shock wave that had just come crashing over them, leaving the two blinded for a second.

When the worst of it passed, they opened their eyes and saw Dorry in a sword versus ax fight out by the volcano.

As if everything else today hadn't already gone horribly off track, Eric couldn't shake the feeling that the worst was yet to come.

.

.

.

.

.

Hey all, TTI here.

Well, I guess when I said "I'll be back with the real chapter five soon enough.", I meant "I'll return in a little under two years time.", huh?

Unlike the last time I posted, I'm not going to be making any promises I can't keep about when I will or will not be uploading new chapters of the story. The way to look at it from now on is whenever I post will be just that, whenever I do.

That was the first big thing I wanted to say, the other is that along with this new chapter the entire story has received a GIANT makeover… Ha…

In all seriousness, if there were any sort of technical issues or spelling errors within earlier chapters before, they should all be gone now. I've polished this story as much as I feasibly can.

I highly recommend that everyone who's already read the first four chapters and is skipping ahead to chapter five go back and re-read them as well. There have been some scene changes that will have effects later in the story which you won't know about otherwise, plus it's going to be a far more enjoyable experience now. (Of course this doesn't apply if chapter six is out when you read this.)

Announcements done, I now must truly thank you all for 30 favorites and 28 follows.

I'm shocked anyone has even seen this story since I stopped updating it, let alone given it favorites and follows. I have to say that if this story had remained completely stagnant, I probably wouldn't have bothered doing any of this. You guys keep From Plumber To Pirate alive kicking.

To round this note from me off, I hope everyone has a great 2018!

Stay tuned and all that. =]


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